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GLAD TIDINGS. 



COMPRISING 



SERMONS 

AND 

PRAYER-MEETING TALKS. 

■ DELIVERED AT THE N.Y. HIPPODROME, 



D. L. MOODY. 

From the Stenographic Reports, taken verbatim, expressly for 
The New York Daily Tribune. 



CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED, WITH A 

FULL INDEX TO ANECDOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



How Beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring 
glad tidings of good things." — Rom. x. 15. 



y 

p no $~ffy£i}£ 

NEW YORK: 
E. B. TREAT, 805 BROADWAY. 

1876. 

T 






The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Copyright. 
E. B. TREAT. 

1876. 



LAKE SHORE PRES6, 
ROUSES POINT, NEW YORK, 



NOTICE. 

This volume is issued in compliance with numerous 
and repeated requests for the publication in per- 
manent and popular form, of Mr. D. L. Moody's 
Addresses at the Hippodrome, in this city. The 
reports, which are from the stenographic notes taken 
only for The Tribune, have been carefully revised 
and corrected, and are believed to constitute the only 
complete and adequate publication of Mr. Moody's 
Sermons either in this country or in England. 

The Tribune. 
New York, April, 1876. 



PUBLISHER'S NOTICE. 



This volume needs no introduction. It is the Gos- 
pel, plainly, earnestly, and effectively proclaimed. The 
multitudes who have listened to Mr. Moody's soul-stirring 
appeals, and his presentation of " The Way, the Truth 
and the Life " in our own and other lands, furnish a suf- 
ficient evidence of his wonderful power as an evangelist. 

These evangelistic services have, indeed, proved " Times 
of refreshing" not only to individuals, but to churches 
and whole communities, and from these services it is not 
unreasonable to predict that their influence will be univer- 
sally felt and recognized by the future historian as modern 
pentecosts. 

These discourses are not mere sketches or outlines, 
but from full verbatim reports. 

The Tribune made special efforts to secure them cor- 
rectly, by employing a corps of the most expert stenogra- 
phers (frequently having four in attendance at one time) 
a difficult task which but few reporters could and many 



vni PUBLISHER'S NOTICE. 

would not attempt, Mr. Moody frequently speaking at the 
rate of two hundred and thirty words per minute. 

The sermons comprised in this work were all delivered 
in the New York Hippodrome in February, March, and 
April, 1876. We mention this fact to avoid confusion on 
the part of many who might, under a different impression, 
secure copies of the reprint of Mr. Moody's sermons de- 
livered in England. 

The value of this work to Pastors and Christian work- 
ers is greatly enhanced by a full and accurate index to 
the anecdotes and illustrations with which Mr. Moody's 
discourses abound. 

The attendance upon the services of Messrs. Moody 
and Sankey — the latter of whom sang the Gospel while 
the former preached it — has been unprecedented. It is 
carefully estimated that the average daily attendance has 
exceeded twelve thousand, and on many occasions thou- 
sands were unable to gain admission. 

This volume goes forth as a silent preacher of glad 
tidings to the thousands who failed to hear Mr. Moody at 
the Brooklyn Rink, the old Depot in Philadelphia, and 
the New York Hippodrome ; and to the tens of thousands 
throughout the land who have heard of the power and 
influence of these revival services. With the hope that 
these sermons and " talks " may prove " Glad Tidings " to 
multitudes, they are sent out upon their errand of love and 
mercy. E. B. T. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

The Tribune Announcement 3 

Publisher's Notice. • . .5 

Weak things employed to confound the mighty . . . .11 

Faith : 21 

Courage and Enthusiasm 32 

To every man his Work 43 

Love and Sympathy 54 

The Gospel 64 

The Gospel of the New Testament 75 

Regeneration . 86 

Regeneration — Necessity of 98 

God is Love 109 

Christ's Mission to the World 118 

Christ came to Seek and to Save 128 

Seek ye the Lord while He may be found 138 

Grace 149 

Grace — Abounding 160 

Faith, power of 170 

Confessing Christ 180 

Compassion of Christ 194 

The Prodigal Son 204 



x CONTENTS. 

No Room for Christ . 215 

How to be saved 224 

Love ' 240 

Retribution 252 

What seek ye 263 

The Holy Ghost 273 

The Holy Ghost — Mission of ....... 284 

The Death of Christ 293 

Disobedience 302 

Walking with God 314 

Love 325 

Christ as a Deliverer 334 

Noah and the Deluge 346 

The two Adams 357 

The Six one Things . 368 

Christ's call to Peter 382 

Decision 398 

Man's Great Failure 410 

Taking God at His Word 4*9 

The Resurrection 426 

Address to Christian Workers 437 

Address to Young Converts 443 

Prayer Meeting Talks 461 

Index to Anecdotes and Illustrations . . . . 499 



WEAK THINGS EMPLOYED TO CONFOUND 
THE MIGHTY. 



I want to call your attention to that 27 th verse of 1 
Cor. 17, that chapter I read to you : "But God hath chosen 
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God 
hath chosen the weak things to confound the things that are 
mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which are 
despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring 
to nought things that are. That no flesh should glory in His 
presence? There is just one sentence there I would like to 
call your attention to : " But God hath chosen the weak 
things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." 
Then in the 29th verse He tells us why He has chosen the 
weak things — " that no flesh may glory in His presence." 

Now, if we are to have the Word in this City of New 
York, we must give God all the glory. I dread coming 
to a new place ; it takes almost a week or a fortnight to 
come down to solid work. The people are thinking of 
the choir, and saying " What a large choir ! " and " So many 
ministers ! Surely there is going to be great work now, 
there is such a great choir and congregation and so many 
ministers." It is not by might and power, but by God's 
spirit, and we have got to get our eyes off of all those 
things, and there will be no work and no blessing until 
this is done. Now, we have not come with any new 
Gospel ; it is the old Gospel, the old story, and we want 
the old power, the power of the Holy Ghost ; and, if it is 



I2 GLAD TIDINGS. 

anything less than that, it will all come to naught and be 
like a morning cloud — soon pass away. Now I can tell 
you, before the meetings go on any further, who will be 
disappointed and who in after years will say the meetings 
were a failure — every man and every woman that don't get 
quickened themselves. If there is a minister here in New 
York that doesn't get quickened himself, he will say the 
work has failed ; but I have never known a man who has 
got quickened, to say the work has failed. Nowhere that 
we have been has it been the case. What we want is to 
get down to ourselves, and if there is to be a true revival, 
there must be first a casting down of ourselves before a 
lifting-up. It was only when Abraham was on his face in 
the dust before God that He would talk to him. And it 
is then that God lifts us up and the blessing comes. There 
is no true revival until God's own people are lifted, until 
they are quickened. It will be superficial until then. It 
will be a counterfeit. If you attempt to begin to work 
among the ungodly and unconverted before you get quicken- 
ed yourself, God won't bless you. As the Psalmist says, 
" When the Lord has restored to us the joy of His salva- 
tion, then we will be able to teach transgressors the way 
of the Kingdom of God," and not until then, and when we 
are cold and lukewarm and are conformed to the world, and 
have not the Holy Ghost resting upon us, why God is not 
going to revive His work. Here and there we will hear 
of one converted, but it won't be deep and thorough un- 
less the Church of God is quickened. 

Now, I have just come here, and I confess I have seen 
nothing in America like what has pleased me in Princeton. 
I think they have a revival there, and the President of the 
college told me he had not seen anything like it, and one 
of the Faculty told me he didn't think there had ever been 
anything like it in the history of Princeton. Of course I 
inquired into it, and I found that they had sent for differ- 



WEAK THINGS EMPLOYED, ETC. I3 

ent ministers to come there and had been disappointed, 
and they got together — the Christians did — and prayed 
God to bless them, and one of the Faculty asked them to 
pray for him, and right there the work broke out, and there 
have been about fifty quickened and brought back who had 
wandered from Christ, and it looks now as if all Princeton 
was going to be blessed. 

Oh that it may commence here to-night in our hearts ; 
that we may be quickened first, and then how quick the 
Lord will bless us. If you want to introduce two men to 
each other you want to be near to them. If you want to 
introduce sinners to God you must be near to God and to 
the sinner, too ; and if a man is near God he will have a 
love for the sinner and his heart will be near that man. 
But until we are brought near to God ourselves, we cannot 
introduce men to God. Somebody has said God uses the 
vessel that is nearest at hand, and if we are near to God 
He will use us, and if we are not of course He cannot. 
Now, what we want is to be in a position that will give 
God all the glory. There are some things that make me 
tremble at times as if the work will all come to naught, be 
cause there is so much man-worship. Now, we have got 
to get rid of this man worship before it will be a deep work. 
We have got to sink self. If we can only get " I " down 
in the dust and get outside of our dignity and get self out 
of the way and say, " Here, Lord, use me if Thou canst, 
and, if not, use somebody else," or in the spirit of the 
wilderness preacher who said, " I must decrease but He 
must increase," then the Lord will take us up and use us. 

And right here, before I forget it, I want to urge the 
people of New York — the Christian people — not to buy 
anything of these people on the street. I am told that 65 
men have come on from Philadelphia to sell photographs 
and medals, and I don't know what not, and they are 
hawking them in the streets. Why I would almost think 



14 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



nobody would come into the meeting it, when coming 
along, they hear these men crying the photographs. I be- 
lieve that Christian people who patronize these men are 
doing the cause of Christ a great injury. I don't know 
that anything is hindering the work more than these men, 
that are making money out of us. If you want hymn- 
books, go into some bookstore and buy them. Don't buy 
these photographs. They are no more photographs of us 
than they are of you. I have not had one taken for eight 
years. [Laughter.] Some men complained that they had 
got counterfeits, and I was glad they had been cheated, be- 
cause they ought not to buy them so on the street. People 
are apt to say of us, " Those fellows are speculating. They 
are just making money. They don't care anything about 
saving our souls." And the impression has gone abroad 
just on account of people's patronizing these men. Oh ! 
let me beg of you to do anything you can to keep down 
this man-worship. Let us look at the Cross, with Christ 
full in view, and then we will have men coming into the 
Kingdom of God. 

Now, let us get back to the text. It is the weak things 
that God wants to use. We want the great, the mighty 
but God takes the foolish things, the despised things, the 
things which are not. What for ? That no flesh may 
glory in His sight. Now, what is that written for unless it 
is that we shall learn the lesson that God shall have the 
glory, and that we are not to take any of the glory to our- 
selves ? " That no flesh may glory in His sight ? " Just 
the moment we are ready to take our places in the dust 
and give God His place, and let Him have all the glory, 
then it is that the Spirit of God will be given to us. If we 
are lifted up and say we have got such great meetings and 
such crowds are coming, and get to thinking about crowds 
and about the people, and get our minds off from God, and 
are not constantly in communion with Him, lifting our 



WEAK THINGS EMPLOYED, ETC. 



15 



hearts in prayer, this work will be a stupendous failure. 
Now, you will find in all ages God has been trying to teach 
His children this lesson — that He uses the weak instead of 
the strong. 

What is highly esteemed of man is an abomination to 
God. When God was about to deluge the earth He want- 
ed an ark built. What did He do — did He call an army ? 
No, He just called one man to build the ark. In the sight 
of the world it was a very little thing, and yet when the 
deluge came it was worth more than all the world. The 
weak things of the world that excite our scorn and con- 
tempt are the very things that God uses. When God de- 
livered Egypt He didn't send an army. We would have 
sent an army or an orator. We would have sent some man 
who would have gone down before the King, and laid it 
out before him in grand style, but God didn't do that. He 
sent this man Moses, who had been back there in the 
desert 40 years, a man with an impediment in his speech — 
and God said to Moses, " Moses, I want you to go down into 
Egypt, and bring my people out of bondage." That is not 
our way. When the King looked at him he ordered him 
out of his presence, " Who is God, that I should obey 
Him ? " He found out who He was. God used the little 
fly and the little frog. The world looks upon the frog 
with scorn and contempt, but Moses said, " Oh, there are a 
good many of them." We may be very weak in ourselves, 
but see what a mighty God we have. God likes to take 
the weak things to confound the mighty. When God wants 
to move a mountain -He does not take the bar of iron, but 
He takes the little worm. The fact is, we have got too 
much strength. We are not weak enough. It is not our 
strength that we want. One drop of God's strength is worth 
more than all the world. There was that giant whom we are 
told for 40 days came out every morning and every even- 
ing. Down into that Valley came the Giant of Gath every 



1 6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

morning, and he terrified all the army of Saul ; the whole 
army were trembling; they were afraid. When Joshua 
was weak in himself and strong in the Lord, then they did 
not fear the giant. But you see Saul and his army had 
got their eyes off from God. When we get our eyes off 
from God how mighty that giant looks ! There came a 
young stripling up from the country — a sort of a delegate 
of the Christian commission. He heard of this giant, and 
the young boy began to inquire : " What does this mean ? " 
And they told him, and he wanted to go right out at once 
to meet him. The last man we would have chosen, but 
God's ways are not our ways. God will have the glory, 
that is the point. If it had been some great giant, then we 
would have given the giant all the glory. The young 
stripling requires no army of Saul ; he just takes a few 
small, smooth, round stones out of the brook and puts 
them in his sling. He says to the giant : " You have your 
sword, but I have come in the name of my God." Yes, he 
leaned upon the strength of God. Now just look at that ! 
We are to pass that little stone into that sling. God' 
directs it, and the work is done. The Giant of Gath falls. 
David was the last one we would have chosen, though he 
is chosen of God. 

What we want is to learn the lesson that we are weak* 
and we don't want any strength but God's strength. Look 
at Jonathan with his small army ! " Why," he says, " the 
Lord can save by few as well as many." It is not these 
great meetings that are going to do the work. It is not by 
might and by power, but by the spirit of God. But let me 
just impress this upon you that it is weakness that God 
wants. There was weeping once in Heaven. John wept 
when the book of seals was brought out, and there wasn't 
any one who could open the book. He might have looked 
upon Abel, but Abel wasn't worthy to open the book. He 
might have looked upon Enoch, but Enoch wasn't worthy. 



WEAK THINGS EMPLOYED, ETC. 17 

He might have looked upon Abraham, and yet the father 
of the faithful wasn't worthy to open that book. There 
was Daniel and Elijah, and the holy men of the Old Testa- 
ment, and not one of them worthy to open the book. 
Some of the saints of the New Testament had en ered 
upon their reward. There was Stephen who was martyred. 
Stephen wasn't able to open the book. And John said he 
began to cry as he looked down, and there wasn't one 
worthy to open the book. But pretty soon a voice said, 
" Don't weep ; the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is able to 
open the seals ;" and John began to look around to see 
the Lion, and lo, it was a Lamb. Instead of having strength 
we want weakness. It is the Lion — the Lamb of Calvary. 
He sealed the Lion of Hell, He overcame the Lion, He 
conquered him. What we want to-night is to ask God to 
give us weakness not strength, then these obstacles, why 
how small they look ! When we are walking with God, all 
these obstacles how they flee away. Go up in a balloon 
and look down upon some giant and how small he looks. 
Go up into some mountain and look down upon some giant 
and how small he looks ! But get on a level and how large 
he looks ! God takes the weak things to confound the 
mighty. When He wanted twelve men to introduce His 
Gospel, whom did He take ? Did He call the wise and 
mighty ? No ; He called a few ignorant Galilean fishermen. 
It was those men the power of God rushed in upon. They 
were weak in themselves, but strong in God. So to-night, 
if there is a band weak in themselves but strong in God, 
what a work they can do ! No other strength is worth 
having but the strength of God. When God wanted Ger- 
many to be blessed he gave power to one man. The Spirit 
came upon Martin Luther, and all Germany was blessed. 
When darkness and superstition was settling over Scotland, 
the Spirit of God came upon John Knox, and he moved 
all Scotland. You can go where you will in Scotland to- 



1 8 GLAD TIDINGS. 

day, and everywhere you will hear the name and feel the 
influence of John Knox in that country. You can go into 
England to-day and you will feel the influence of Wesley 
and Whitfield, grand men and mighty. They relied not 
upon their own strength, for the Spirit of the Living God 
was upon them. They were mighty in God. Look at that 
man Gideon. He marshalled his army of thirty thousand 
men to give battle to the Philistines. God said : " Gideon, 
your army is too great. My people would be lifted up, and 
they would take the glory upon themselves." God said to 
Gideon, " You just say to the men who are fearful and afraid, 
' Go home.' " And the Lord reduced the army twenty thou- 
sand, leaving only ten thousand men. But God said : 
' Gideon, you have got too many ; if those ten thousand 
men get victory, they will say, ' Look what we have done.' 
Just take them down to the water, and we will try them 
again. Those that drink it up one way and those that lap 
it up another, they shall be separated." Then God took 
away all but three hundred. God said that was enough. 
" If I get a victory with those three hundred, I will get the 
glory." I would rather have three hundred men in New 
York whose hearts are right with God than a host who 
take upon themselves the glory which belongs to the Lord. 

I have no doubt but that some here will say, " There 
are so many obstacles in the way I don't believe we are 
going to succeed. You won't succeed in New York ; it is 
a very hard place, New York is." If God is with us we 
are going to succeed. If we take God out of our plans 
we are going to fail, and we ought to fail. Is not the God 
of our fathers strong enough to take this city and shake it 
as a little child ? There is not a skeptic in the City of 
New York but what the power of God can reach. 

When we were in Philadelphia, we almost failed for a 
few weeks. The crowds were so great that many of those 
who attended the meetings spent most of their time in 



WEAK THINGS EMPLOYED, ETC 



19 



watching the people. We could not get their eyes towards 
the Cross for a long time. By and by, when the holidays 
came on, the numbers began to fall off, and it was the best 
thing for us. It was what we wanted, so that men could 
think of God. 

Now, my friends, do not think that anything is small 
that God handles. Look at that little cloud up there, not 
bigger than a man's hand ; but that cloud was large enough 
to water all Palestine, and the land that had thirsted for 
three years and six months got all the water out of that 
cloud that it wanted. Plenty large enough if God is in it. 
Let me say before we close, that what we want is to get 
hold of God. Now, there are a great many people that 
lend their ears to other people. They never hear for them- 
selves. They want you people to use their ears for them. 
Let us each go up for ourselves, and pray to God that we 
may get a blessing for ourselves. If the Spirit of the Lord 
God comes upon us it will take all eternity to tell the re- 
sult. If the Spirit of God comes upon us afresh, I have 
no more doubt about the success of the meetings than I 
have that we exist. If we are cold and indifferent then 
the work will be superficial. It will not be lasting, and 
will not be such as many of you are praying for. Let us 
ask God that we may receive the blessing of the Holy 
Spirit. Let the prayer be " Oh ! God, quicken me. O ! 
God, give me a fresh baptism. Instil in me the blessing 
of Thy salvation." God said to Elijah just before he went 
away, " Go call Elisha to take thy place." If God calls 
us to a work, He can qualify us to do it. When the time 
drew near for Elijah to be" taken from Elisha, Elijah said 
to Elisha, " I will go down and see the prophet." It had 
been revealed to Elijah that Elisha was going to be taken 
out. Elisha wanted to be anointed near the place he was 
called to fill. They traveled together until they reached 
Bethel, and then Elijah said, " You stay here, and I will go 



20 GLAD TIDINGS. 

down to Jericho and see how the prophets are getting along 
down there." But Elisha kept close to him, and they 
walked arm in arm to Jericho. When they reached Jeri- 
cho, Elisha said, " You just stay here and I will go over to 
Jordan." They were on a tour of inspection of the theo- 
logical seminaries. But Elisha still kept close to his com- 
panion, and as they were talking together, Elijah asked, 
" What can I do for you, Elisha ? What is your petition ? " 
" Well," says Elisha, " I want a double portion of your 
spirit." Well, that was a pretty bold petition. He was 
asking great things. That is what God wants us to 
do — ask great things. They came to the waters of the 
Jordan, and Elisha takes off his mantle, the waters spread, 
and they pass through safely, dry shod. While they were 
talking, there suddenly comes a chariot from heaven to 
bear Elijah away to glory. And Elisha takes up the man- 
tle of Elijah, and Elisha goes back to Jordan ; and when 
they saw the mantle of Elijah they cried out, " The spirit 
of Elijah rests upon Elisha." The mighty spirit of Elijah 
rest upon us to-night. Let us go to our closets, let us go to 
our homes, and let us cry to the God of Elijah — "Here I 
am, God, use me" — that we may be readyfor all His ser- 
vices. Oh, that we may be weak in ourselves, that we may 
give all the honor and glory to Jesus, and if we do this we 
will see how quick He will use it. 



i 



FAITH 



In beginning his sermon, Mr. Moody called attention 
to a clause of the 20th verse of the 5th chapter of St. 
Luke: "When he saw their faith." A little while before 
this, said he, Christ had been driven out of Nazareth, in 
his native town, and had come down to Capernaum to live, 
and He had begun His ministry, and some mighty mira- 
cles had already been wrought in Capernaum. A little 
while before this, one of the officers in King Herod's 
army had a son who had been restored. Peter's wife's 
mother, that lay sick with the fever, had been healed, and 
Mark tells us that the whole city was moved, that they had 
come to the door of the house where He was sitting, the 
whole city bringing their sick. In fact, there was a great 
revival in Capernaum. That is what it was, and it is all it 
was. The news was spreading far and near. Everybody 
coming out of Capernaum was taking out tidings of what 
this mighty preacher was doing, and His mighty miracles, 
and the sayings that were constantly falling from His lips. 
And we read in a few verses before this 20th verse, that a 
man full of leprosy had come to Him and said : " Lord, if 
Thou canst, make me clean," and I want to call your at- 
tention to the difference between a man that had the palsy 
and the man that had the leprosy. The man with the 
palsy had friends who had faith. The man who had the 
leprosy had no friends who believed he could be cleansed. 
There had been no leper cleansed for 800 years, and we 



22 GLAD TIDINGS. 

read back in the days of Elisha that there was a leper that 
was cleansed, but none since that time until now. Here 
is a leper that has faith and goes right straight to the Son 
of God Himself ; and I want to say if there is a poor sin- 
ner here to-night that has not got any friends that would 
pray for him, you can go right straight to Jesus Himself. 
You don't need any Bishop or priest or potentate to inter- 
cede. Right away to Christ came this poor leper. He 
said : " If Thou will, Thou canst make me clean." 

There is faith for you. He did not say, like the man 
in the 9th chapter of Mark : " If thou canst do anything 
for us, have compassion." He put the "if" in the wrong 
place j but this leper said, " If Thou wilt, Thou canst 
do it." It pleased the Lord, and He said : " I will. Be 
thou clean," and away went the leprosy. He was made 
well in "a minute, and of course this news had gone out of 
Capernaum, and not only the city was stirred, but the 
country also, and now we read that they were coming up 
from all parts of Judea, from Galilee and all the vil- 
lages, and even from Jerusalem. The news had reached 
Jerusalem, and the Pharisees and philosophers and 
wise men, were coming up to this northern town to 
see what this great revival meant. They didn't come up 
to get a blessing. Like a great many who come to these 
meetings, they came out of curiosity. They came to see 
how 7 it was that this man was performing such mighty mira- 
cles, and they were told that He was in the house. Ther 
they were sitting around the Master, and we are told the 
power of the Lord was present to heal them. But it don 
say that they were healed. They didn't think that the 
were sick and needed a Saviour. Like hundreds now that 
are drawing around them their filthy rags of self-righteous 
ness, they think they are good enough without salvatio 
and they just come here to reason out the philosophy of th 
meeting, and how it is so many people come together nigh 



e 



FAITH. 



23 



after night to hear this old Gospel, which has been 
preached 1800 years. " And the power of the Lord was 
present to heal them." I have thought a number of times 
what a glorious thing it would have been if they had all 
been healed. What a glorious thing if those men coming 
out of Judea had been converted and gone back to publish 
the glad tidings in their homes and villages. What a re- 
vival it would have been. But they didn't come for that 
purpose, but only to reason out the thing. 

But while these things were being done, suddenly a noise 
was heard overhead. The people heard a noise on the 
roof and looked up to see w r hat was the matter. Now, 
there were four men in Capernaum-^-I have an idea they 
were young converts — who found a man who had the palsy, 
and they could not get him to Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke all three give an account, but don't one of them say 
that the man himself had any faith. I can imagine these 
four men said to the man with the palsy, " If we can get 
you to Jesus all He has to do is to speak and the palsy is 
gone." And I see these four men making arrangements 
to take this man with the palsy away to Christ. They pre- 
pared a couch something like the stretcher we had in the 
war, and I see these four men each one taking his place 
to carry that couch through the streets of Capernaum. 
They go with a firm step and steady tread. They are 
moving toward that house where Christ is. These men 
have confidence. They know that the Son of God has 
power to heal this man, and they say, " If we can only 
get him to Jesus, the work will be done ; " and while these 
philosophers and scribes and wise men were there, trying 
to reason out the philosophy of the thing, these men 
arrived at the door, and for the crowd could not get in. 
They undoubtedly asked some of the men to come out and 
let this man with the palsy in ; but they could not get 
them out, and there thev are. But faith looks over obsta- 



24 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



cles. Faith is not going to surrender. Now these men 
felt they must get in in some way, and I can imagine they 
went to one of the neighbors and asked them, " Just allow 
us to use your stairway. Here is a man that has the 
leprosy and we want to get him in," and I see the men 
taking this man up, and at last they got him upon the roof 
of the house where Christ is preaching ; and now you can 
hear them ripping up the roof, and everybody looks up to 
see what the noise is ; and at last they see that while 
Christ is preaching these four men are making a hole large 
enough to let a man down through. 

He must have been a good man, or he would have 
complained to see his roof torn up in that way. But these 
men wanted to get the leper cleansed. That was worth 
more than the roof. They wanted to get the man blessed. 
They let the man right down into the presence of these 
Pharisees and Scribes. It would have been like letting 
him down into an ice-house if Christ had not been there. 
Those Scribes and Pharisees — they didn't have any com- 
passion ; they didn't have any sympathy for the fallen ; 
they didn't have any sympathy for the erring. There was 
One who had sympathy for the man who was suffering. 
They laid him right down at the feet of Jesus. My friends, 
you can't take palsied souls to a better place than to the 
feet of Jesus. They called upon the crowd to stand aside 
and make room, and they just placed him at the feet of 
Jesus. Christ looks up, and when He saw their faith — 
not the man's faith ; it don't say that he had any — He 
saw their faith — that's the point. I believe that that 
whole miracle is to teach us that that whole lesson is to 
teach us Christians that God will honor our faith. I see 
the Son of God looking up at those four men who laid this 
leper down. He looked up yonder and saw their faith. 
There is nothing on this earth that pleases Him so much 
as faith. Wherever He finds faith it pleases Him. Twice 



FAITH. 25 

Christ marvelled. I believe Christ marvelled only twice. 
Once He marvelled at the faith of the Centurion, and He 
marvelled at the unbelief of the Jews. 

When He saw their faith, He said to the man looking 
down at Him, " Be of good cheer ; thy sins are forgiven." 
Why, he didn't come for that ; he only expected to get rid 
of his palsy ; he didn't expect to have his sins forgiven. 
These men begun to look around with amazement. " That 
is a very grievous charge ; He forgives sin. What right 
has He to do that ? It is God and God alone who does 
that." I tell you the Jews to a man didn't'believe in the 
divinity of Jesus Christ. They began to reason among 
themselves, but Christ knew what they were thinking about. 
He could read their thoughts. Christ said to them, " Is it 
easier for me to say to the man, ' His sins be forgiven,' or 
for me to say, ' Rise up and walk ? ' Now that you may 
know that the Son of Man hath power to forgive sins, I 
say, ' Rise up and walk.' " Now the man was a leper. He 
hadn't the power to rise, but he leaps up in a minute. He 
packs up that old bed that he had lain on for years, and 
away he goes. The man walks out with his bed on his 
back, and away he goes home. The men began to look 
at one another with amazement, and one and another said) 
" We have seen strange things to-day." How long did it 
take the Lord Jesus Christ to heal that man ? Some men 
say, "Oh, we don't believe in instantaneous conversions." 
How long did it take the Lord to heal the man of the lep- 
rosy ? One word, and away went the leprosy. One word, 
and the man stood up, and he rolled his bed up, and away 
he went on his way home. I should like to have seen his 
wife. I can imagine she was about as surprised as any 
woman you ever saw. 

But now the word I want to call your attention to is this : 
"When He saw their faith." Now, there are a great many 
men in New York that don't have any faith in the Gospel 



2 6 GLAD TIDLNGS. 

at all. They don't believe in that Bible. There are a 
great many men in New York who are infidels. There are 
a great many skeptics. There is one thing that encourages 
me very much. The Lord can honor our faith, and raise 
those men. " When He saw their faith." Suppose a man 
should go to the house of his neighbor, and say, " Come, 
let us take neighbor Levi to neighbor Peter's house ; 
Christ is there, and we can get him healed," and the two 
found they weren't able to carry the man, so they got three, 
and the three weren't able, so they got the fourth. Now 
I don't know of anything that would make a man get up 
quicker than to have four people combining to try to bring 
him to Christ. Suppose one man calls upon him after 
breakfast; he doesn't think much about it; he has had 
some one invite him to Christ before. Suppose before 
dinner the second man comes, and says, " I want to lead 
you to Christ. I want to introduce you to the Son of 
God." The man has got quite aroused now ; perhaps he 
has never had the subject presented to him by two dif- 
ferent men in one day. But the third man has come, and 
the man has got thoroughly aroused by. this time, and he 
says to himself, " Why, I never thought so much about my 
soul as I have to-day." But before the man gets to bed at 
night the fourth man has come, and I will guarantee that 
he won't sleep much that night — four men trying to bring 
him to Christ. If we can't bring our friends to Christ, let 
us get others to help us. If four men won't do it, let us 
add the fifth, and the Lord will see our faith, and the Lord 
will honor our faith, and we will see them brought to the 
Son of God. 

When I was at Nashville during our late war, I was 
closing the noon prayer meeting one day and a great strong 
man came up to me, trembling from head to foot. He 
took a letter out of his pocket and wanted to have me read 
it. It was a letter from his sister. The sister stated in 



FAITH 



27 



that letter that every night as the sun went down she went 
down on her knees to pray for him. The sister was six 
hundred miles away, and said the soldier, " I never thought 
of my soul until last night. I have stood before the can- 
non's mouth and it never made me tremble, but, Sir, I 
haven't slept a wink since I got that letter." I think there 
is many a Christian here who understands what that letter 
meant. The Lord had seen her faith. It was God honor- 
ing faith, and it was God answering prayer. And so, my 
friends, if God sees our faith, these friends that we are 
anxious for will be brought to Christ. When we were in 
Edinburgh a man came to me and said, " Over yonder is 
one of our most prominent infidels in Edinburgh. I wish 
you would go over and see him." I took my seat beside 
him, and I asked him if he was a Christian. He laughed 
at me and said he didn't believe in the Bible. "Well," said 
I, after talking for some time, " will you let me pray with 
you ? Will you let me pray for you ?" " Yes," said he, 
" just pray and see if God will answer your prayer. Now 
let the question be decided." " Will you kneel ?" " No, 
I won't kneel. Who am I going to kneel before ?" He 
said it with considerable sarcasm. I got down and prayed 
beside the infidel. He sat very straight, so that the people 
should understand that he was not in sympathy at all with 
my prayer. After I got through I said, " Well, my friend, 
I believe that God will answer my prayer, and I want you 
to let me know when you are saved." " Yes, I will let you 
know when I am saved," all with considerable sarcasm. 
At last up at Wick, at a meeting in the open air, one night 
on the outskirts of the crowd I saw the Edinburgh infidel. 
He said, " Didn't I tell you God wouldn't answer your 
prayer ?" I said, " The Lord will answer my prayer yet." 
I had a few minutes conversation with him and left him, 
and just a year ago this month, when we were preaching 
in Liverpool, I got a letter from one of the leading pastors 



2 3 GLAD TIDINGS. 

of Edinburgh stating that the Edinburgh infidel had found 
his way to Christ and found the Lord. He wrote an in- 
teresting letter, saying how God had saved him. And 
there may be many in the City of New York who will laugh 
at this idea, and they will cavil, and perhaps they will say 
to-night that God don't answer prayer ; but He does, if 
Christians will only have faith. God can save the greatest 
infidel, the greatest skeptic, the greatest drunkard. What 
we want is to have faith. Oh, let that word sink down 
deep into the heart of every Christian here to-night, and 
let us show our faith by our works. 

Let us go out and bring all our friends here, and if there 
is poor preaching, we can bring down from Heaven the ne- 
cessary blessings without good preaching. In Philadelphia 
a skeptic came in just out of curiosity. He wanted to see 
the crowd, and he hadn't more than crossed the threshold 
of the door before the Spirit of God met him, and I asked 
him if there was anything in the sermon that influenced 
him, in hopes that I was going to get something to encour- 
age me ; but he could not tell what the text was. I asked 
him if it was the singing, but he didn't know what Mr. San- 
key had sung. It was the power of God alone that convert- 
ed him, and that is what we want in these meetings. If 
we have this power, when we invite our friends here the 
Lord will meet them and will answer prayer and save them. 
Let us go and bring our unconverted friends here. All 
through the services let us be lifting up our hearts in prayer. 
God save our friend ! O God, convert him ! And in answer 
to our prayer the Lord will save them. 

While in London there was a man away off in India — 
a godly father — who had a son in London, and he got a 
furlough and came clear from India to London to see after 
his boy's spiritual welfare. Do you think God let that 
man come thus far without honoring that faith ? No. He 
converted that son, and that is the kind we want — where 



FAITH. 



29 



faith and works go together ; and if we have faith God will 
honor it and answer our prayer. Only a few years ago in 
the City of Philadelphia there was a mother that had two 
sons. They were just going as fast as they could to ruin. 
They were breaking her heart, and she went into a little 
prayer-meeting and got up and presented them for prayer. 
They had been on a drunken spree or had just got started 
in that way, and she knew that their end would be a drunk- 
ard's grave, and she went among these Christians and said, 
" Wont you just cry to God for my two boys ? " The next 
morning those two boys had made an appointment to meet 
each other on the corner of Market and Thirteenth sts. — 
though not that they knew anything about our meeting — 
and while one of them was there at the corner, waiting for 
his brother to come, he followed the people who were flood- 
ing into the depot building, and the spirit of the Lord 
met him, and he was wounded and found his way to 
Christ. After his brother came he found the place too 
crowded to enter, so he too went curiously into another 
meeting and found Christ, and went home happy ; and when 
he got home he told his mother what the Lord had done 
for him, and the second son came with the same tidings. 
I heard one get up afterward to tell his experience in the 
young convert's meeting, and he had no sooner told the 
story than the other got up and said : " I am that brother, 
and there is not a happier home in Philadelphia than we 
have got ; " and they went out, bringing their friends to 
Christ. 

Let us now show our faith by our works. Let us away 
to our friends, to our neighbors, and to those we have an 
influence over, and let us talk about Christ and let us plead 
with God that they may be converted, and instead of there 
being a few thousands converted in New York, tens of thou- 
sands can be converted ; and let our prayers go up to God 
in our homes and around our family altars. Let the 



3 o GLAD TIDINGS. 



prayers go up, " God, save my unconverted husband." 
" O God, save my unconverted wife." " O God, save my un- 
converted children," and God will hear that cry. As I was 
coming out of a daily prayer-meeting in one of our Western 
cities, a mother came up to me and said, " I want to have 
you see my husband and ask him to come to Christ." I 
took out my memorandum book, and I put down his name. 
She says, " I want to have you go and see him." I knew 
the name and that it was a learned judge, and so said to her, 
" I can't agree with him. He is a good deal older than I 
am, and it would be out of place. Then I am not much for 
infidel argument." "Well, Mr. Moody," she says, "that 
ain't what he wants. He's got enough of that. Just ask 
him to come to the Saviour." She urged me so hard and so 
strong, that I consented to go. I went up to the office 
where the Judge was doing business, and told him what I 
had come for. He laughed at me. " You are very foolish," 
he said, and began to argue with me. I said, " I don't 
think it will be profitable for me to hold an argument 
with you. I have just one favor I want to ask of you, and 
that is that when you are converted you will let me know." 
" Yes," said he, " I will do that. W T hen I am converted I 
will let you know " — with a good deal of sarcasm. I 
thought the prayers of that wife would be answered if mine 
was not. A year and a half after I was in that city, and a 
servant came to my door and said : " There is a man in the 
drawing-room." I found the Judge there. He said : " I 
promised I would let you know when I was converted." I 
had heard it from other lips, but I wanted to hear it from 
his own. He said his wife had gone out to a meeting one 
night and he was home alone, and while he was sitting 
there by the fire he thought, " Supposing my wife is right, 
and my children are right : suppose there is a heaven and 
hell, and I shall be separated from them." His first 
thought was, " I don't believe a word of it." The second 



.. 



FAITH. 3 Y 

thought came, " You believe in the God that created you, 
and that the God that created you is able to teach you. 
You believe that God can give you life." " Yes, the God 
that created me can give me life. I was too proud to get 
down on my knees by the fire, and I said, ' O God, teach 
me.' And as I prayed, I don't understand it, but it began 
to get veiy dark, and my heart got very heavy. I was 
afraid to tell my wife, and I pretended to be asleep. She 
kneeled down beside that bed, and I knew she was praying 
for me. I kept crying, ' O God, teach me.' 1 had to 
change my prayer, ' O God, save me ; O God, take away 
this burden.' But it grew darker and darker, and the load 
grew heavier and heavier. All the way to my office I kept 
crying, *0 God, take away this load.' I gave my clerks a 
holiday, and just closed my office and locked the door. I 
fell down on my face ; I cried in agony to my Lord, \ O Lord, 
for Christ's sake, take away this guilt.' I don't know how it 
was, but it began to grow very light. I said, I wonder if 
this isn't what they call conversion. I think I will go 
and ask the minister if I am not converted." The old 
Judge said to me : " Mr. Moody, I have enjoyed life in the 
last three months more than all put together." The judge did 
not believe, the wife did, and God honored her faith and 
saved that man. And he went up to Springfield, 111., and 
the old Judge stood up there and told those politicians 
what God, for Christ's sake, had done for him. And now 
let this text sink down deep into your hearts : " When He 
saw their faith." Let us lift up our hearts to God in prayer 
that He may give us faith. 



COURAGE AND ENTHUSIASM. 



I shall take for my subject to-night only two words, cour- 
age and enthusiasm — necessary qualifications for successful 
work in the Lord's service. In this chapter (Josh, i.) I read 
to-night four different times God tells Joshua to be of good 
courage, and He says that if he was of good courage no 
man should be able to stand before him all the days of his 
life. And we read that in the evening of his life he was 
successful, and that no man was able to stand before him 
all his days. God fulfilled His promise. God kept His 
word. But see how careful God is to instruct him on this 
one point. Four times in one chapter he says to him, 
" Be of good courage, and then you shall prosper, then you 
shall have good success." And I have yet to find that 
God ever uses a man that is all the time looking on the 
dark side, and is all the time talking about the obstacles 
and looking at them, and is discouraged and cast down. 
It is not these Christians that go around with their head 
down like a bulrush, looking at the obstacles and talking 
about the darkness all the time, that God uses. They kill 
everything they touch. There is no life in them. Now if 
we are going to succeed we have got to be of good cour- 
age, and the moment we get our eyes on God and remem- 
ber who He is, and that He has all power in Heaven and 
earth, that it is God that commands us to work in His vine- 
yard, then it is that we will have courage given us. 

Now if you just take your Bibles and look carefully 



COURAGE AND ENTHUSIASM. 33 

through them you will see the men that have left their mark 
behind them ; the men that have been successful in win- 
ning souls to Christ have all been men of that stamp. You 
will notice that when Moses commenced, after he had been 
among the Egyptians forty years, hethrought the time had 
come for him to commence his work of delivering the cap- 
tives, and he went out, and the first thing we hear is that 
he was looking this way and that way to see if somebody 
called him. He was not fit for God's work. God had to 
take him on the back side of the desert for forty years, and 
then God was ready to send him, and Moses then looked but 
one way. And He sent him down into Egypt. He had 
boldness now, and he goes right before the King of Egypt, 
and he had courage and God could use him. But it took 
him forty years to learn that lesson, that he must have cour- 
age and boldness to be a fit vessel for the Master's use. 

Again we find Elijah on Mount Carmel, full of boldness. 
How the Lord used him ! How the Lord stood by him ! 
How the Lord blessed him ! But when he got his eyes off the 
way, and Jezebel sent a message to him that she would 
have his life, he got afraid. He was not afraid of Ahab 
and the whole royalty, and he was not afraid of the whole 
nation. He stood on Mount Carmel alone, and see what 
courage he had and admiration. But what came over 
him I don't know, unless it was that he got his eyes off 
the Lord, and when one woman gave him that message 
he got frightened, and God had to go to him and ask him 
what he was doing ; and he was not fit for God's com- 
munion. 

That, I think, is the trouble with a good many of God's 
people. We get frightened, and are afraid to speak to men 
about their souls. We lack moral courage, and if we hear 
the voice of God speaking to us and saying, " Run and 
speak to that young man," we will go to him meaning to do 
it, and will really talk to him about everything else, and dare 

3 



34 GLAD TIDINGS. 

not about his soul. When we begin to invite them to 
Christ is when the work begins, and it won't begin until 
we have the courage given us and are ready to go and speak 
with them about their souls. We read that when the apos- 
tles were brought before the council they perceived their 
boldness, and it made an impression on the council. The 
Lord could use them then, because they were fearless and 
bold. Look at Peter on Pentecost, when he charged the 
murder of the Son of God upon the Jews. A little while 
before he had got out of communion, and one little maid 
had scared him nearly out of his life, so that he swore he 
didn't know Christ. Ah ! he had his eyes off the Master, 
and the moment we get our eyes off Christ we get disheart- 
ened, and then God cannot use us. 

I remember a few years ago I got discouraged and 
could not see much fruit of my work ; and one morning, 
as I was in my study, cast down, one of my Sabbath 
school teachers came in and wanted to know what I was 
discouraged about, and I told him, because I could see no 
result from my work ; and speaking about Noah he said : 
" By the way, did you ever study up the character of 
Noah ? " I felt that I knew all about that, and told him 
that I was familiar with it, and he said, " Now, if you never 
studied that carefully, you ought to do it, for I cannot tell 
you what a blessing it has been to me." When he went 
out I took down my Bible and commenced to read about 
Noah, and the thought came stealing over me, " Here is a 
man that toiled and worked a hundred years and didn't 
get discouraged ; if he did, the Holy Ghost didn't put it 
on record," and the clouds lifted, and I got up and said, if 
the Lord wants me to work without any fruit I will work 
on. I went down to the noon prayer-meeting, and when I 
saw the people coming to pray I said to myself, " Noah 
worked a hundred years, and he never saw a prayer-meet- 
ing outside of his own family." Pretty soon a man got up 






COURAGE AND ENTHUSIASM. 



35 



right across the aisle where I was sitting, and said he had 
come from a little town where there had been a hundred 
uniting with the Church of God the year before. And I 
thought to myself, " What if Noah had heard that ! He 
preached so many, many years and didn't get a convert, 
yet he was not discouraged." Then a man got up right 
behind me, and he trembled as he said, " I am lost. I 
want you to pray for my soul." And I said, " What if 
Noah had heard that ! He worked a hundred and twenty 
years, and never had a man come to him and say that ; 
and yet he didn't get discouraged." And I made up my 
mind then, that, God helping me, I would never get dis- 
couraged. I would do the best I could, and leave the 
results with God, and it has been a wonderful help to me. 
And so let me say to the Christians of New York that we 
must expect good results, and never get discouraged ; but 
if we don't get good results, let us not look on the dark 
side, but keep on praying, and in the fulness of time the 
blessing of God will come. What we want is to have the 
Christians come out and take their stand. I find a great 
many professed Christians for a long time ashamed to 
acknowledge that they have been quickened. Some have 
said they did not like the idea of asking Christians to rise, 
as I did last evening ; that it was putting them in a false 
position. Now, if we are going to be successful, we have 
got to take our stand for God, and let the world and every 
one know we are on the Lord's side. I have great respect 
for the woman that started out during the war with a 
poker. She heard the enemy were coming and went to 
resist them. When some one asked her what she could 
do with the poker, she said she would at least let them 
know what side she was on. And that is what we want, 
and the time is coming when the line must be drawn in 
this city, and those on Christ's side must take their stand, 
and the moment we come out boldly and acknowledge 



3 6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

Christ, it is that men will begin to inquire what they must 
then do to be saved. 

Then there is a class of people that are not warm 
enough. I don't think a little enthusiasm would hurt the 
Church at the present time. I think we need it. I know 
the world will cry out against it. Business men will cry 
out against religious enthusiasm. Let railroad stocks go up 
fifteen or twenty per cent, and see what a revival there would 
be in business. If there should be a sudden advance in 
stocks, see if there wouldn't be enthusiasm on 'Change to- 
morrow. Let there be a sudden change in business, and 
see if there isn't a good deal of enthusiasm on the street. 
We can have enthusiasm in business, we can have enthu- 
siasm in politics, and no one complains of that. A man 
can have enthusiasm in everything else, but the moment 
that a little fire gets into the church they raise the cry, 
" Ah, enthusiasm — false excitement — I am afraid of it." 
I do not want false excitement, but I do think we want a 
little fire, a little holy enthusiasm. But these men will 
raise the cry, " Zeal without knowledge." I had a good 
deal rather have zeal without knowledge than knowledge 
without zeal, and it won't hurt us to have a little more 
of this enthusiasm and zeal in the Lord's work. I saw 
more zeal when I was in Princeton last Sunday than I have 
in many a year. I was talking to the students there about 
their souls, and after I had been talking for some time, 
quite a group of young men gathered around me, and the 
moment that one of them made a surrender and said, 
" Well I will accept Christ," it seems as if there were 
twenty-five hands pressed right down to shake hands with 
him. That is what we want — men that will rejoice to hear 
of the conversion of men. Although I don't admire his 
ideas, I do admire the enthusiasm of that man Garibaldi. 
It is reported that when he marched toward Rome in 1867, 
they took him up and threw him into prison, and he sat 






COURAGE AND ENTHUSIASM. 



37 



right down and wrote to his comrades, " If fifty Garibaldis 
are thrown into prison let Rome be free." That is the 
spirit. Who is Garibaldi ? That is nothing. " If fifty 
Garibaldis are thrown into prison let Rome be free." That 
is what we want in the cause of Christ. We have got to 
work, and not be loitering at our ease. And then the 
question of dignity comes up. We have got to lay all that 
aside, and we have got to be helpers. What difference 
does it make whether we are hewers of wood or carriers of 
water while the Temple of God is being erected ? Yes, let 
us have an enthusiasm in the Church of God. If we had 
it in a few of the churches in New York, I believe it would 
be like a resurrection. The people would say, " What has 
come over this man ? he ain't like the same man he was two 
months ago." We want to have them say, " The Son of 
God is dearer to us than our money. The Son of God is 
dearer to us than our families. The Son of God is dearer 
to us than our position in society." Let us do anything 
that the work of God may go on, and when we get there 
God will bless us. Why, it says in the Bible, " One shall 
chase a thousand." We have not got many of that kind in 
our churches. I wish we had more of them. It says, 
" Two shall put ten thousand to flight." Now, if a few 
should lay hold of God in this way, see what a great army 
ere long will be saved in this city ! But then we have got 
to be men after God's own heart. They cannot be luke- 
warm ; they have got to be on fire with the cause of Christ. 
We have got to have more of this enthusiasm that will 
carry us into the Lord's work. If there is going to be a 
great revival in New York, it ain't going to be in this hall. 
It has got to be done by one and another going around 
and talking to their neighbors. There isn't a skeptic, 
there isn't a drunkard, but what can be reclaimed if we 
come with desire in our hearts. We musn't go around 
professionally if we want to see any result. There is a 



3 g GLAD TIDINGS. 

story told in history in the ninth century, I believe, of a 
young man that came up with a little handful of men to 
attack a king who had a great army of three thousand men. 
The young man had only five hundred, and the king sent a 
messenger to the young man, saying that he need not fear to 
surrender, for he would treat him mercifully. The young 
man called up one of his soldiers and said : " Take this 
dagger and drive it to your heart ; " and the soldier took 
the dagger and drove it to his heart. And calling up another, 
he said to him, " Leap into yonder chasm," and the man 
leaped into the chasm. The young man then said to the 
messenger, " Go back and tell your King I have got 500 men 
like these. We will die, but we will never surrender. And 
tell your King another thing, that I will have him chained 
with my dog inside of half an hour." And when the King 
heard that, he did not dare to meet them, and his army 
fled before them like chaff before the wind, and within 24 
hours he had that King chained with his dog. 

That is the kind of zeal we want. " We will die but 
we will never surrender." We will work until Jesus comes» 
and then we will rise with Him. O, if men are willing to 
die for patriotism, why can they not have the same zeal for 
Christ ? All that Abraham Lincoln had to do, was to call 
for men, and how speedily they came. When he called for 
600,000 men how quick they sprang up all over the nation. 
Are not souls worth more than this republic ? Are not 
souls worth more than this government ? Don't we want 
600,000 men ? If 600 men should come forward whose 
hearts were right red-hot for the Son of God, we would be 
able to see what mighty results would follow. " One man 
shall chase a thousand, and two shall put ten thousand to 
flight." During our war, the generals that were all the 
time on the defensive, never succeeded. The generals 
that were successful, were the generals that were on the 
aggressive. Some of our churches think they are doing 



COURAGE AND ENTHUSIASM. 39 

remarkably well if they hold their membership, and they 
think if they have 30 or 40 conversions in that church dur- 
ing the year, that that is remarkable work. They think it 
is enough to supply the places of those who have died and 
those who have wandered away during the past. It seems 
to me we ought to bring thousands and thousands to 
Christ. I say the time has come for us to have a war on 
the side of aggression. There may be barriers in our 
path, but God can remove them. There may be a moun- 
tain in our way, but God can take us over the mountain. 
There may be difficulties in the way, but He can overcome 
them. Our God is above them all, and if the Church of 
God is ready to advance, all obstacles will be removed. 
No man ever sent by God ever failed, but self must be 
lost sight of. We must be willing to lay down our lives 
for the cause of Christ. 

When I was going to Europe in 1867, my friend Mr. 
Stuart, of Philadelphia, said, " Be sure to be at the General 
Assembly in Edinburgh, in June. I was there last year," 
said he, " and it did me a world of good." He said that a 
returned missionary from India was invited to speak to 
the General Assembly, on the wants of India. This old 
missionary, after a brief address, told the pastors who were 
present, to go home and stir up their churches and send 
young men to India to preach the gospel. He spoke with 
such earnestness, that after a while he fainted, and they 
carried him from the hall. When he recovered he asked 
where he was, and they told him the circumstances under 
which he had been brought there. " Yes," he said, " I was 
making a plea for India, and I didn't quite finish my 
speech, did I ? " After being told that he did not, he said, 
" Well, take me back and let me finish it." But they said, 
" No, you will die in the attempt." " Well," said he, " I 
will die if I don't," and the old man asked again that they 
would allow him to finish his plea. When he was taken 



40 GLAD TIDINGS. 

back the whole congregation stood as one man, and as they 
brought him on the platform, with a trembling voice he 
said : " Fathers and mothers of Scotland, is it true that 
you will not let your sons go to India? I spent 25 
years of my life there. I lost my health, and I have come 
back with sickness and shattered health. If it is true that 
we have no strong grandsons to go to India, I will pack up 
what I have and be off to-morrow, and I will let those 
heathens know that if I cannot live for them I will die for 
them." 

The world will say that that old man was enthusiastic. 
Well, that is just what we want. No doubt that is what 
they said of the Son of God when He was down here. G, 
that God may baptize us to-night with the spirit of enthu- 
siasm ! That He may anoint us to-night with the Holy 
Ghost ! Let me say to some of you men — I see some gray 
locks here, who I have no doubt are saying, "J wish I was 
young again ; I would like to help in this work. I would 
like to work for the Lord." When we went to London 
there was an old woman 85 years old, who came to the 
meetings and said she wanted a hand in that work. She 
was appointed to a district, and called on all classes of 
people. She went to places where we would probably 
have been put out, and told the people of Christ. There 
were none that could resist her. When the old woman, 85 
years old, came to them and offered to pray for them, they 
all received her kindly — Catholics, Jews, Gentiles, all. That 
is enthusiasm. That is what we want in New York. If 
you cannot give a day to this work, give an hour, or if not 
an hour, five minutes. If you have not strength to do any- 
thing personally, you can pray for this work. Now, it is a 
good deal better to do that than it is to stand off criticisirg. 
Some will say, " O, I heard my grandfather say how such 
things should be done. This is not managed right to be 
successful." And they stand off and criticise and find 



COURAGE AND ENTHUSIASM. 4I 

fault, arid we will never succeed as long as they do this. 
All should work and ask God's guidance. 

Once, when a great fire broke out at midnight and peo- 
ple thought that all the inmates had been taken out, way up 
there in the fifth story, was seen a little child, crying for 
help. Up went a ladder, and soon a fireman was seen 
ascending to the spot. As he neared the second story the 
flames burst in fury from the windows, and the multitude 
almost despaired of the rescue of the child. The brave 
man faltered, and a comrade at the bottom cried out, 
" Cheer ! " and cheer upon cheer arose from the crowd. 
Up the ladder he went and saved the child, because they 
cheered him. If you cannot go into the heat of the battle 
yourself, if you cannot go into the harvest field and work 
day after day, you can cheer those that are working for 
the Master. I see many old people in their old days, get 
crusty and sour, and they discourage every one they meet 
by their fault finding. That is not what we want. If we 
make a mistake come and tell us of it, and we will thank 
you. You don't know how much you may do by just 
speaking kindly to those that are willing to work. I re- 
member when I was a boy I went several miles from home 
with an older brother. That seemed to me the longest 
visit of my life. It seemed that I was then further away 
from home than I had ever been before, or have ever 
been since. While we were walking down the street 
we saw an old man coming toward us, and my bro- 
ther said, "There is a man that will give you a 
cent. He gives every new boy that comes into this town 
a cent." That was my first visit to the town, and when 
the old man got opposite to us he looked around, and my 
brother not wishing me to lose the cent and to remind the 
old man that I had not received it, told him that I was a 
new boy in the town. The old man, taking off my hat, 
placed his trembling hand on my head, and told me I had 



42 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



a Father in heaven. It was a kind, simple act, but I feel 
the pressure of the old man's hand upon my head to- 
day. 

Now you can all do something in this work of saving 
souls. That is what we have come to this city for. There 
is not a mother, a father, nor wife, there is not a young 
man in all the city, but what ought to be in sympathy with 
this work. We have come here to try to save souls. I 
never heard of one that was brought to Christ that it in- 
jured them. Oh, let us pray for the Spirit of God ; let us 
pray that this spirit of criticism and of fault-finding may 
be all laid aside, and that we may be of one spirit as they 
were on the day of Pentecost. 



TO EVERY MAN HIS WORK.' 



I want to call your attention to a verse you will find 
in the 13th chapter of Mark, part of the 34th verse — 
" To every man his work." " For the Son of Man is as a 
man taking afar journey, who left his house and gave au- 
thority to his servants, and to every man his work, and com- 
manded the porter to watch." Now, by reading that verse 
carefully it don't read, " to every man some work," or " to 
every man a work," but " to every man his work." And 
I believe, if the truth was known, that every man and 
woman in this assembly has a work laid out for them to 
do ; that every man's life is a plan of the Almighty, and 
way back in the councils of eternity God laid out a work 
for each one of us. There is no man living that can do 
the work that God has got for me to do. No one can do 
it but myself. And if the work ain't done we will have 
to answer for it when we stand before God's bar. For it 
says: "Every man shall be brought unto judgment, and 
every one shall give an account of the deeds done in the 
body." And it seems to me that every one of us ought 
to take this question home to-night : " Well, am I doing 
the work that God has for me to do ? " God has got a 
work for every one of us to do. Now, in the parable the 
man who had two talents had the same reward as the 
man who had five talents. He heard the same words as 

the man who had five talents : " Well done, thou good and 

43 



44 GLAD TIDINGS. 

faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
The men that take good care of the talents that God has 
loaned them, he always gives them more. But if we take 
the talent that God has given us and lay it away carefully 
in a napkin and bury it away, God will take even that 
from us. God don't want a man that has got one talent 
to do the work of a man that has got ten. All a man has 
got to answer for is the one that God has given each man. 
If we were all of us doing the work that God has got for 
us to do, don't you see how the work of the Lord would 
advance ? I believe in what John Wesley used to say, 
" All at it, and always at it," and that is what the Church 
wants to say. 

But men say, " I don't believe in these revivals ; it's 
only temporary, it only lasts a few minutes." Yes, if I 
thought it was only to last a few minutes, I would say 
" Amen " to everything they say. My prayer has been for 
years that God will let me die when the spirit of revival 
dies out in my heart, and I don't want to live any longer 
if I can't be used to some purpose. What are we all 
down in this world of sickness and sorrow unless it is to 
work for the Son of God, and improve the talents He has 
given us. But some men are not satisfied with the talents 
they have, but are always wishing for some one else's 
talents. Now that is all wrong. It is contrary to the 
spirit of Christ. Instead of wishing for some one elses 
talents, let us make the best use of the talents God has 
given us. Now, there ain't a father or a mother here but 
would think it a great misfortune if their children shouldn't 
grow any for the next ten or fifteen years. That little 
boy there, if he shouldn't grow any for ten or fifteen years, 
his mother would say, " It is a great calamity." I know 
some men of my acquaintance who make the same prayers 
they made fifteen or twenty years ago. They are like a 
horse in a tread-mill — it is always the same old story of 



" TO EVERY MAN HIS WORK." 45 

their experiences when they were converted, and going 
round and round. If you had a child that was deaf and 
dumb you would think it a great misfortune. Do you 
ever think how many dumb children God has got ? You 
speak about political matters, and they can talk. You 
ask them what do they think about General Grant's third 
term, and hear them talk. You ask them about stocks 
and bonds, and hear them talk. You talk to them about 
the hard times in New York, and see if they can't talk. 
But you ask them to speak about the Son of God, and they 
say : " Oh no, I can't speak about that. Please excuse 
me." Either they don't believe, or they have gone like 
the third man and buried their talent, and they say, " The 
Lord is a hard master." I remember once a party of gen- 
tlemen speaking of this parable that I read, and asking a 
deaf man, " What do you think of this man's hiding his 
talent, and about the justice of his reward ? " The deaf 
man replied, " I don't know anything about the justice of 
his reward, but I know he is a liar. The Lord isn't a hard 
master. He told lies when he said that." And so these 
men who bury their talents they think the Lord is a hard 
master, but the men who are using their talents they don't 
think the Lord is a hard master. 

Let us do all the business we can. If we can't be a 
lighthouse,- let us be a tallow candle. There used to be a 
period when the people came up to meeting bringing their 
candles with them. The first one, perhaps, wouldn't make 
a great illumination, but when two or three got there, there 
would be more light. If the people of this city should do 
that now, if each one should come here with your candle, 
don't you think there would be a little light ? Let all the 
gas be put out in this hall, and one solitary candle would 
give a good deal of light here. If we can't be a lighthouse, 
let us be a tallow candle. Some one said, " I can't be 
anything more than a farthing rushlight." Well, if you 



46 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



can't be more, be that, that is well enough. Be all you 
can. 

What makes the Dead Sea dead ? Because it is all 
the time receiving, never giving out anything. Why is it 
that many Christians are cold ? Because they are all the 
time receiving, never giving out anything. You go every 
Sunday and hear good sermons, and think that is enough. 
You are all the time receiving these grand truths, but 
never give them out. When you hear it, go and scatter 
the sacred truth abroad. Instead of having one minister 
to preach to a thousand people, this thousand ought to take 
a sermon and spread it till it reaches those that never go 
to church or chapel. Instead of having a few, we ought 
to have thousands using the precious talents that God has 
given them. 

Now, Andrew got the reputation of bringing people to 
Christ. He went about it in the right way; he began 
right. I imagine that when Christ wanted these mighty 
deeds done He went out and hunted up Andrew. Andrew 
inquired of the people, " Have you seen anything of 
Peter ? " and when he found him he brought him to Christ. 
Little did Andrew know of the importance of the day 
when he brought Peter to Christ. Little did he think that 
on that day he did the greatest act of his life. What joy 
must have filled his heart when he saw three thousand 
brought under the influence of the Spirit by that holy man. 
Oh, you cannot tell what results will follow if you just im- 
prove the talent God has given you by bringing one Simon 
Peter to Christ. Then we read that when the Greeks 
came and wanted to see Jesus, Andrew met them and 
brought them all to Christ. Andrew had a reputation of 
bringing sinners to God. That is a good reputation. I 
would rather have that reputation than any other. Oh, 
the joy there is in bringing people to Christ. This is what 
we all can do if we will. If God has given us but half 



« TO E VER Y MAN HIS WORK." 47 

a talent, let us make good use of that. When God told 
the people to take their seats by fifties, He told Philip to 
get food for them. " What," says Philip, " feed them with 
this little loaf ? Why, there is not more than enough for 
the first man." "Yes, go and feed them with that." 
Philip thought that was a very small amount for such a 
multitude of hungry men. He broke off a piece for the 
first man, and didn't miss it ; a piece for the second man, 
and didn't miss it ; a piece for the third man, and didn't 
miss it. He was making good use of the loaf, and God 
kept increasing it. That is what the Lord wants to do 
with us. He will give us just as many talents as we can 
take care of. 

There are many of us that are willing to do great things 
for the Lord, but few of us willing to do little things. The 
mighty sermon on regeneration was preached to one man. 
There are many who are willing to preach to thousands, 
but are not willing to take their seat beside one soul and 
lead that soul to the blessed Jesus. We must get down to 
personal effort — this bringing one by one to the Son of 
God. We can find no better example of this than . in the 
life of Christ Himself. Look at that wonderful sermon 
that He preached to that lone woman at the well of Samaria. 
He was tired and weary, but He had time and the heart 
to preach to her. This is but one of many instances in the 
life of the Master from which we may learn a precious 
lesson. If the Son of God had time to preach to one soul, 
cannot every one of us go and do the same ? If people, 
instead of coming to these meetings, folding up their arms 
and enjoying themselves, without personal effort, would 
wake up to the fact that they have a work to do, what a 
wonderful work could be done ! It is not enough to come 
to these meetings ; we want ten thousand workers in New 
York City. We want ten thousand men and women that 
are willing to say, " Lord, here am I, use me." Ten thou- 



4 8 GLAD TIDINGS. 

sand of such people would revolutionize this city in a little 
while. Look at the work of the mighty Wesley. The 
world never saw a hundred such men living at the same 
time. The trouble is we are afraid to speak to men about 
their souls. Let us ask God to give us grace to overcome 
this man-fearing spirit. There is a wife but she dare not 
speak to her husband about his soul. There is a father 
that dare not speak to a son about his soul. What we 
want to do is to speak to our neighbors about these things. 
We call it a little work, but let me say to you it is a great 
deal. If we would do this we might turn ten thousand to 
the Son of God. 

I remember hearing of a person that was always trying 
to do some great thing for the Lord, and because he could 
not do a great thing he never did anything. There, are a 
great many who would be willing to do great things if they 
could come up and have their names heralded through the 
press. I remember hearing of a man's dream, in which 
he imagined that when he died he was taken by the angels 
to a beautiful temple. After admiring it for a time, he 
discovered that one stone was missing. All finished but 
just one little stone } that was left out. He said to the 
angel, " What is this stone left out for ? " The angel re- 
plied, " That was left out for you, but you wanted to do 
great things, and so there was no room left for you." He 
was startled and awoke, and resolved that he would become 
a worker for God, and that man always worked faithfully 
after that. 

Now, my friends, we must not expect to do great things. 
We must take anything that comes to us. We must let 
the Lord use us as he sees fit. I remember once, while 
preaching at a meeting, of noticing in the congregation a 
lady who had a class in a mission school. I knew that it 
was the time for them to meet, and I wondered what she 
was there for. When I got home I said, " How did you 



"TO EVERY MAN HIS WORK." 49 

happen to be at the meeting this afternoon ? What did you 
do with all those little lambs ? Haven't you a class that 
meets to-day?" "Yes," she said, " but I only have five 
little boys, and I didn't think it would matter if I didn't 
teach them to-day." "Have you five little boys?" 
"Yes." "How do you know but among those little 
boys there may be a Knox, there may be a Wesley, 
or a Whitfield, or a Bunyan ? There may be a man there 
who will go out and revolutionize the world." My friends, 
in that little boy with his tattered clothes and uncombed 
hair there may be a Martin Luther, if you would but lead 
him to Christ. If you have five little children come to you, 
thank God for that, and start w 7 ith your work. I heard some 
time ago of a young lady that went out to a boarding- 
school. Her parents were very wealthy, and sent her to 
the best school they could find. They were very anxious 
that their daughter should shine in the highest circle of so- 
ciety, that she should become refined and educated. 
Among her associates at school was a lady who loved and 
worked for Christ. By constant labor she won this young 
girl's heart, and pleaded with her to become a Christian. 
She succeeded, and the young lady became a worker in 
the vineyard of the Lord. She taught her the luxury 
of working for Christ. She labored with her school- 
mates, and God used her in winning quite a number of 
young ladies in that school to Christ. I have known a 
great many ministers who wanted to know how they could 
keep their congregation out of the world. Give them so 
much to do that they won't have time to cherish worldly- 
influences. This young lady of whom I was speaking 
came home, and her father and mother wanted her to shine 
in the fashionable society. No, she said she had got some- 
thing better than that. She went to the Sabbath-school 
superintendent, and said to him, " Can you give me a class 
in the Sunday-school ? " He was surprised that this young 



5° 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



lady should want that. He told her that he had no class 
he could give her then. She went away with a resolve to 
do what she could outside of the school. One day, as she 
was walking up the street, she saw a little boy running out 
of a shoemaker's shop, and behind him was the old shoe- 
maker chasing him with a wooden last in his hand. He 
had not run far until the last was thrown at him, and he 
was struck in the back. The boy stopped and began to 
cry. The spirit of the Lord touched that young lady's 
heart and she went to where he was. She stepped up to 
him, and asked him if he was hurt. He told her it was 
none of her business. She went to work then to win that 
boy's confidence. She asked him if he went to school. 
He said, "No." "Well, why don't you go to school?" 
"Don't want to." She asked him if he would not like to 
go to Sunday School. " If you will come," she said, " I 
will tell you beautiful stories and read nice books." She 
coaxed and pleaded with him,and at last said that if he would 
consent to go, she would meet him on the corner of a street 
which they should agree upon. He at last consented, and 
the next Sunday, true to his promise, he waited for her at 
the place designated. She took him by the hand and led 
him into the Sabbath School. " Can you give me a place to 
teach this little boy ? " she asked of the superintendent. 
He looked at the boy, but they didn't have any such look- 
ing little ones in the school. A place was found, however, 
and she sat down in the corner and tried to win that soul 
for Christ. Many would look upon that with contempt, 
but she had got something to do for the Master. The little 
boy had never heard anybody sing so sweetly before. When 
he went home he was asked where he had been. " Been 
among the angels," he told his mother. He said he had 
been to the Protestant Sabbath School, but his father and 
mother told him he must not go there any more, or he 
would get a flogging. The next Sunday he went, and 



" TO E VER Y MAN HIS WORK." 5 1 

when he came home he got the promised flogging. He 
went the second time and got a flogging, and also a third 
time with the same result. At last he said to his father, 
" I wish you would flog me before I go, and then I won't 
have to think of it when I am there." The father said, 
" If you go to that Sabbath-school again I will kill you." 
It was the father's custom to send his son out on the street 
to sell articles to the passers-by, and he told the boy that 
he might have the profits of what he sold on Saturday. 
The little fellow hastened to the young lady's house and 
said to her, " Father said that he would give me every Sa- 
turday to myself, and if you will just teach me then I will 
come to your house every Saturday afternoon. I wonder 
how many young ladies there are that would give up their 
Saturday afternoons just to teach one boy into the king- 
dom of God ! Every Saturday afternoon that little boy 
was there at her house, and she tried to tell him the way 
to Christ. She labored with him, and at last the light of 
God's spirit broke upon his heart. One day while he was 
selling his wares at the railroad station, a train of cars ap- 
proached unnoticed and passed over both his legs. A phy- 
sician was summoned, and the first thing after he arrived, 
the little sufferer looked up into his face and said, " Doc- 
tor, will I live to get home ? " " No," said the doctor, 
"you are dying." "Will you tell my mother and father 
that I died a Christian ? " They bore home the boy's 
corpse and with it the last message that he died a Chris- 
tian. Oh, what a noble work was that young lady's in saving 
that little wanderer ! How precious the remembrance to 
her ! When she goes to heaven she will not be a stranger 
there. He will take her by the hand and lead her to the 
throne of Christ. She did the work cheerfully. Oh, may 
God teach us what our work is that we may do it for His 
glory. 

It is the greatest pleasure of living to win souls to 



5 2 GLAD TIDINGS. 

Christ, and it is a pleasure that angels can't enjoy. It is 
sometimes a wonder to me that God doesn't take the work 
out for the church and give it to the angels. If the redeem- 
ed saints could come by the bar, I sometimes think they 
would rejoice in coming back here to have the privilege of 
leading one more soul to Christ. Isn't it high time that 
the Church got awake from its midnight slumber ? It is 
time the work was commenced, and when the Spirit of God 
revives it, sha'n't we go and do it ? Are there not 5,000 Chris- 
tians in this hall, and ain't there some one among them that 
can lead a soul to Christ within the next week ? If we work, 
what a great army can be brought in, if we are only faith- 
ful ! I want to say to the Christians here that there is one 
rule I have followed that has helped me wonderfully. I 
made it a rule that I wouldn't let a day pass without speak- 
ing to some one about their soul's salvation, and if they 
didn't hear the Gospel from the lips of others, there will be 
365 in a year that shall hear the Gospel from my lips. There 
are 5,000 Christians here to-night; can't they say, "We 
won't let a day pass without speaking a word to some one 
about the cause of Christ." 

At a place where we were holding meetings, in the gas- 
works, there was a man who came to our very first meeting. 
He was very much interested, and said, " I will try and see 
if I can't lead some of the men in my shop to Christ." He 
began to talk with them. There were 175 men on the night 
watch, and when I left they said 25 out of the 175 had been 
converted, and every night at midnight — that is the hour 
they have what might be called their midnight dinner — and 
every night at midnight they have a prayer-meeting. When 
you and I sleep to-night all those young converts speak and 
pray, and it looks now as if every man in the gas works was 
going to be brought to Christ. 

When we were in Belfast there was a man who heard 
about leading souls to Christ. He began by talking to 



" TO EVERY MAN HIS WORK." 53 

his wife, and to his servant, and to his children, and just 
as we were leaving Belfast they were very much interested, 
but not converted. He came down to Dublin — broke up 
his home, left his business, and came to Dublin. One 
night he came to me very joyous, and he says, " My wife 
has been converted." A little while after he came and 
said, " My younger son has been converted ; " and a little 
while after he said, " My oldest son has been converted." 
And now the whole family is in the ark. And he came 
over to Manchester, and he came up to London, and now 
perhaps in all Belfast there is not one that works harder 
than that whole family. Look at this man's success. He 
found his work was right there in his own household ; and 
if the fathers and mothers, and sisters, and wives, and bro- 
thers will try to bring the members of their families to Christ, 
and cry " O God, teach me what my work is," the Spirit 
of God will surely tell them what their work is, and then if 
they are ready to go and do it, there will be thousands con- 
verted in this city in a few days. O, may the Spirit of the 
Lord come upon us to-night, and may every one of us be 
taught by the Holy Ghost what our work is, and may we be 
ready to do it. 



LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 



I want to follow up the subject we have had during the 
past week in the noon prayer meeting. We have had for 
our subject " Prayer," and in these meetings, a good many 
of you will remember, we have had the subject " Work." 
Now we want to put the two together, " Pray and Work." 
That is really about all tfrere is to it. It is to pray and to 
work. I am in hopes we will be ready next Sabbath to go 
to work with individuals. I am in hopes there will be 
thousands of Christians that will just be trying to lead 
some soul to Christ. Now there are two qualifications 
which we need in order to be successful fishermen of men, 
in order to be successful' in winning souls to Christ. Some 
of you will remember I have taken the subjects, " Courage 
and Enthusiasm." I want to take two others, " Love and 
Sympathy." I want to call your attention to the 13th 
chapter of Corinthians, where it says that if " I speak with 
the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I 
am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal ;" and 
if we even give our bodies to be burned and yet if we 
haven't real love in our hearts, our work will go for naught. 
I want to call your attention to a passage in Titus, in the 
2d chapter of Titus, two verses : " But speak thou the 
things which become sound doctrine ; that the aged men 
may be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity 
and in patience." 



LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 



55 



If love don't prompt all work, all work is for naught. If 
a man in the church ain't sound in his faith, we draw our 
ecclesiastical sword and cut his head right off ; but he may 
not be sound in love, yet we do nothing in his case. The 
great want in our churches is the want of love in them. If 
we had more love we would do better, for love begets love, 
and then, too, hate begets hate. You often hear a man 
say that such and such a man is the meanest man in town. 
Now the other man may have had no ill-feeling toward the 
speaker, but if he hears of the remark he begins to think 
badly of the one who abused him, and soon learns to hate 
him. Now, if a man should hear that another man loves 
him and has spoken well of him, his love will grow too. 
Christ tells all men, " by this shall all men know — have 
love one to another." This love will be the badge of the 
Christian, the badge by which to tell who they are, like the 
badges the ushers wear here. Without love we are not 
really converted to the Church of God. When we are 
truly converted we love all things and all men better than 
ever before. The morning I was converted I went out of 
doors and I fell in love with the bright sun shining over 
the earth; I never loved the sun before. And when I 
heard the birds singing their sweet songs, I fell in love 
with the birds, like the Scotch lassie who stood on the hills 
of her native land, breathing the sweet air, and when 
asked why she did it, said : " I love the Scotch air." If the 
church was filled with love, it could do so much more. 

I am tired of the word duty ; tired of hearing duty, 
duty, duty. Men go to church because it is their duty. 
They go to prayer-meeting because it is their duty. You 
can never reach a man's heart if you talk to him because 
it is your duty. Suppose I told my wife I loved her be- 
cause it was my duty — what would she say ? Once every 
year I go up to Connecticut to visit my aged mother. Sup- 
pose, when I go next time, I tell her that I knew she was 



5 6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

old and that she was living on borrowed time ; that I knew 
she had always done a great deal for me, and that I came 
to see her every year because it was my duty. Don't you 
think she would say, " Well then, my son, you needn't take 
the trouble to come again ? " Let us strike for a higher 
plane. God loved the world when it was full of. sinners 
and those who broke his law. If he did so, can't we do it, 
and love our fellowmen ? If the Saviour could die for the 
world, can't we work for it ? The churches would soon be 
filled if outsiders could find that people in them loved them 
when they came, if the elders and deacons were glad to 
see them and were ready to take them by the hand and 
welcome them. Such things would draw sinners. Actions 
like these speak louder than words. We do not want to 
talk of love and not show it in our deeds ; we want some 
thing more than tongue love. 

If our hearts go out toward them and we love them, 
they will be drawn toward us and we will win them to 
Christ. We must win them to us first and then we can 
win them to Christ. The last time I heard Dr. Arnold 
speak — he died soon afterward — he used a homely illustra- 
tion. Said he, " Those of you who were brought up on a 
farm will understand it. When you have to wean a calf 
you have to teach it how to drink. You take a bucket of 
milk and then you put your fingers in the calf's mouth, and 
when he has got a good hold you pull his nose right down 
into the milk. Then you slip your fingers out, and then 
the calf is drinking before he knows anything about it. 
So," said he, " you must get the people to love you, and 
then turn them over to Christ." We must be more lovely 
ourselves, and show the people that we love them. In our 
city a few years ago there was a little boy who went to one 
of the mission Sunday-schools. His father moved to an- 
other part of the city about five miles away, and every Sun- 
day that boy came past 30 or 40 Sunday-schools to the one 



w 



LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 



57 



he attended. And one Sunday a lady who was out collect- 
ing scholars for a Sunday-school met him and asked him 
why he went so far, past so many schools. " There are 
plenty of others," said she, " just as good," He said, " They 
may be as good, but they are not so good for me." " Why 
not ? " she asked. " Because they love a fellow over 
there," he answered. Ah ! love won him. " Because they 
love a fellow over there ! " How easy it is to reach people 
through love ! Sunday-school teachers should win the af- 
fections of their scholars if they wish to lead them to 
Christ. Those who are successful in winning the affec- 
tions of men are successful in leading them to Christ. 

In London, in 1872, one Sunday morning a minister said 
to me, " I want you to notice that family there in one of 
the front seats, and when we go home I want to tell you 
their story." When we got home I asked him for the story, 
and he said, " All that family were won by a smile." 

" Why," said I, " how's that ? " " Well," said he, " as I 
was walking down a street one day I saw a child at a win- 
dow ; it smiled, and I smiled, and we bowed. So it was 
the second time ; I bowed, she bowed. It was not 
long before there was another child, and I had got in a 
habit of looking and bowing, and pretty soon the group 
grew, and at last, as I went by, a lady was with them. I 
didn't knew what to do. I didn't want to bow to her, but I 
knew the children expected it, and so I bowed to them all. 
And the mother saw I was a minister, because I carried a 
Bible every Sunday morning. So the children followed me 
the next Sunday and found I was a minister. And they 
thought I was the greatest preacher, and their parents must 
hear me. A minister who is kind to a child and gives him 
a pat on the head, why the children will think he is the 
greatest preacher in the world. Kindness goes a great 
way. And to make a long story short, the father and 
mother and five children were converted, and they are going 



58 GLAD TIDINGS 



to join our church next Sunday." Won to Christ by 
smile. We must get the wrinkles out of our brows, and we 
must have smiling faces. The world is after the best 
thing, and we must show them that we have got something 
better than they have got. I thought last night how I 
wished I knew the young men better. I have got some- 
thing better than infidelity. We must convince them of 
this, or those that live out of Christ will stumble over us into 
the last world. Men are after the best thing everywhere, 
and we must show the world that we have got the best 
thing before we win the world. If a man is after a horse 
he wants to get the best horse he can for the money. If a 
lady goes shopping, she wants to get the best ribbon she 
can for the money. If a man wants a coat he wants to get 
the best coat he can for the money. This is the 
law the world around. If we show men that religion is 
better than anything else, we shall win the world, but we 
cannot do it if we are cold and lukewarm, and under the 
lashings of conscience all the time. 

We won't win the world to Christ if we are cold and 
lukewarm ; but if the love of God beats in warm pulsations 
in our hearts, and we show them we are full of love, and 
sympathy for them, how easy it will be to win souls to 
Christ ! I like to see in a Christian's face the light that 
comes down from the celestial hills of glory. To love those 
that abuse them, that is what the Master did ; and if we 
have His spirit, we will certainly love those that don't love 
us. I don't think there is a man in New York whose heart 
is so hard but that love will break it. A friend of mine 
who had a large Sabbath-school, had a theory never to turn 
a boy out of Sabbath-school on account of bad conduct. 
" I considered " said he, " that those boys who behaved 
badly in Sunday-school had not had the advantages of a 
good bringing up, and for that very reason ought not to be 
turned out. I found out,", said he, " that it was one thing 



■ 






LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 



59 



to have a theory and another to put it in practice." For 
he had a boy come into his Sunday-school that nearly up- 
set all his practice. He put him under one teacher and 
nothing could be done with him ; he put him under an- 
other teacher, and nothing could be done with him ; 
and he made up his mind to expel him from the school, 
and do it publicly, and let all the school know that the boy 
was expelled. But there came a lady teacher to him who 
said : " I wish you would let me have that boy." " But," 
said he, " he is such a bad boy ; he uses such vulgar lang- 
uage. All those men can't do anything with him, and I 
think I am sure you can't." The lady said, " I am not 
doing much for Christ, and it may be that I can win him." 
But she was a lady of refined society, and he thought, 
" Surely she won't be willing to have patience with that 
boy." He gave her the boy, and, he said, for a few Sundays 
he behaved very well, but one Sunday he behaved badly, 
and she corrected him, and he up and spat in her face. 
She quietly took her handkerchief and wiped her face. I 
don't know what his name was, but we will call him Johnny. 
" Johnny," she says, " I wish you would go home with me. 
I want to talk with you." " Well I won't," he said," I won't 
be seen on the street with you, and what's more I ain't 
never coming to this Sunday-school any more." " Well," 
she says, " if you won't walk home with me, let me walk 
home with you." No, he said he wouldn't be seen on the 
street with her, and he was not coming to that dirty old 
Sunday-school any more. She knew if she was going to 
reach that boy she must do it then, and she thought she 
would try. She thought she would just bear on that curios- 
ity chord. Sometimes when you can't reach people in any 
other way, you do it by exciting their curiosity. She said 
to him : " If you will come to my house next Tues- 
day morning I sha'n't be there, but if you will go there 
and ring the front door bell and tell the servant there is 



60 GLAD TIDINGS. 

a little bundle on the bureau for you she will give it to 
you." The little fellow said he wouldn't come. She thought 
he might change his mind. He thought it over, and he 
thought he would just like to know what there was in that 
bundle. And he went up to the house Tuesday morning 
and the bundle was handed to him ; and there was a little 
vest in it and a little necktie that she had made with her 
own hands, and a kind note stating that ever since he had 
been in her class she had been praying for him every morn- 
ing and every evening, and she told him how she loved 
him and cared for him. The next morning he was there, 
bright and early, before she was up. The servant came up 
and told her that that boy was in the drawing-room and 
wanted to see her. She went down, and found the little 
fellow sitting on the sofa weeping. She spoke to him 
kindly, and said, " What is the trouble ? " and he says, "O, 
teacher, I have had no peace since I got that note from 
you." And she got down and prayed with him ; " And," 
said the superintendent, " there is not a better boy in the 
school." Love conquered him. 

The greatest infidel can be reached by love. The great- 
est drunkard can be reached by love. Infidelity don't 
know anything about love. The religion of Jesus Christ is a 
religion of love. If we would be successful workers in 
His vineyard it is the love of Christ that must bind us to- 
gether. A few years ago I was in a town down in our 
State, the guest of a family that had a little boy about 13 
years who did not bear the family name, yet was treated 
like the rest. Ever}- night when he retired, the lady of the 
house kissed him and treated him in every respect like all 
the other children, I said to the lady of the house, " I 
don't understand it." I think he was the finest looking boy 
I have ever seen. I said to her "I don't understand 
it." She says, " I want to tell you about that boy. 
That boy is the son of a missionarv. His father and 






LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 6 X 

mother were missionaries in India, but they found they 
had got to bring their children back to this country to edu- 
cate them. So they gave up their mission field and came 
back to educate their children and to find some mission- 
ary work to do in this country. But they were not pros- 
pered here as they had been in India, and the father said, 
" I will go back to India ; " and the mother said, " If God 
has called you to go I am sure it will be my duty to go 
and my privilege to go, and I will go with you." The father 
said, " You have never been separated from the children, 
and it will be hard for you to be separated from them ; per- 
haps you had better stay and take care of them. But after 
prayer they decided to leave their children to be educated, 
and they left for India." This lady heard of it and sent a 
letter to the parents, in which she stated if they left one child 
at her house she would treat it like one of her own chil- 
dren. She said the mother came and spent a few days at her 
house, and being satisfied that her boy would receive proper 
care, consented to leave him, and the night before she was 
to leave him, the missionary said to the Western lady : " I 
want to leave my boy to-morrow-morning without a tear ; " 
said she, " I may never see. him again." But she didn't 
want him to think she was weeping for anything she was 
doing for the Master. The lady said to herself, " she won't, 
leave that boy without a tear." But the next day when 
the carriage drove up to the door, the lady went up stairs 
and said she heard the mother in prayer, crying, " O God, 
give me strength for this hour. Help me to go away from 
my boy without a tear." When she came down there was 
a smile'upon her face. She hugged him and she kissed him, 
but she smiled as she did it. She gave up all her five or six 
children without shedding a tear, went back to India and in 
about a year there came a voice, " Come up hither." Do 
you think she would be a stranger in the Lord's world ? 
Don't you think she won't be known there a mother that 



62 GLAD TIDINGS. 

loved her God more than her children ? When I think of 
that it seems as if I didn't know much about making a 
sacrifice for my Master. O, that we might know more 
about the love of Christ. 

The next thing I want to speak of is sympathy. We 
have got to get into sympathy with people if we are going 
to do them good. This world wants sympathy about as 
much as anything. There are so many we could reach if 
we could sympathize with them. If we stand upon a higher 
plane, we won't succeed. The Son of God passed by the 
mansions and went down in a manger that he might sym- 
pathize with the lowly. If we want to reach people, we 
have got to put ourselves in the places of those people, if 
we are going to succeed. People say, " How are the 
masses going to be reached ? " Why, get into sympathy 
with them. If a man knows you are in sympathy with him, 
his heart, however hard it may be, will be broken. A 
gentleman one day came to my office for the purpose of 
getting me interested in a young man who had just got out 
of the penitentiary. " He says," said the gentleman, " he 
don't want to go to the office, but I want your permission 
to bring him in and introduce him." I said, * Bring him 
in." The gentleman brought him in and introduced him, 
and I took him by the hand and told him I was glad to 
see him. I invited him up to my house, and when I took 
him into my family I introduced him as my friend. When 
my little daughter came into the room I said, " Emma, this 
is papa's friend." And she went up and kissed him, and 
the man sobbed aloud. After the child left the room I 
said, " What is the matter ? " " O Sir," he said, " I have 
not had a kiss for years. The last kiss I had was from 
my mother, and she was dying. I thought I would never 
love another one again." His heart was broken. Just 
that little kindness showed I was in sympathy with him. 
Another young man, just out of the penitentiary, came to 



LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 63 

me and after I had talked with him for some time, he 
didn't seem to think I was in sympathy with him. I offered 
him a little money, " No," he said, " I don't want your 
money." " What do you want ?" "I want some one to 
have confidence in me." I got down and prayed with him, 
and in my prayer I called him a brother and he shed tears 
the moment I called him a brother. So if we are going to 
reach men we must make them believe we are their 
brothers. I will tell you how to get there. You must put 
yourself in their places. I tell you, if we only put ourselves 
in their places we can succeed in bringing souls to Christ. 
O ! when we see a poor drunkard, let us bear in mind that 
we might have been in the same place under the same 
circumstances. O ! may God give us love and sympathy 
so that we can reach the masses, and that many may be 
reached in this way, and we will see men coming to Christ 
by thousands. I believe in my soul we are going to see 
the greatest work in New- York we have ever seen in this 
world. Let every one of us that love the Lord Jesus 
Christ make up our minds that by the grace of God we 
will try to help some soul to Christ, and the Lord will 
make us wise in leading souls to Him if that is our prayer. 



"THE GOSPEL." 



I want to call your attention to a verse in the 4th chap- 
ter of the Gospel of Luke — the 18th verse : " The spirit of 
the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the 
gospel to the poor y I have spoken a great many times in 
New York City, but I believe I never preached the Gospel 
here but once. That was 12 or 15 years ago down in the 
Tombs. I have spoken a great many times in different 
parts of the city, but I have never preached the Gospel but 
once. I have tried to arouse Christians up to work. 
People are in the habit of thinking that anything that is 
in the way of a religious meeting is the Gospel, but they 
are mistaken. I have had quite a number of letters from 
Christians complaining because I don't preach the Gospel 
to the people. I want to tell you if I can what the Gospel of 
the Son of God is. I want to ask all those who are Christ- 
ians here, to be silently lifting up their hearts in prayer 
that God may help me to make the way of life plain, and 
that every one may know what the Gospel of God is. I 
believe I was converted years before I knew what the 
Gospel meant. Now the word Gospel means " good spell," 
or in other words, " God's spell. " 

When Christ commenced His Ministry, about His first 

words were, " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because 

He has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor." 

That don't mean those who are poor in this world's 

64 



" THE GOSPEL. " 65 

goods, but that means the poor in spirit. Christ says, 
"The Lord has anointed me," for that purpose. He had 
been out of Nazareth for a few weeks, and had gone down 
to Jordan, where He had met the great wilderness preacher. 
Christ had left Nazareth, and went to meet John, that man 
from the desert that was more like Elijah than any man 
since Elijah went up to heaven in a chariot of fire. There 
he met a great many people, ten thousands of people pro- 
bably and he was crying that the kingdom of God was at 
hand. Down there into the audience came a man, who 
passed down into the water, and He requested John to 
baptize Him. John said that he needed to be baptized of 
Him. But after the baptism there came a voice — God 
confessed his son : " This is my beloved son in whom I am 
well pleased." These thousands took the tidings all over 
the country, and the voice had reached Nazareth, that 
Christ had been baptized by John, in Jordan, and that 
there came down a voice from Heaven saying, "This is my 
beloved son, hear him." When He arrived in Nazareth 
there was no small assemblage ready to meet Him. He went 
into the synagogue, as was His custom,, and He stood up 
and read the prophecy of the prophet Esaias, and he opened 
the book to read — they did not have books like what we 
have, they used to have parchment — He might have turned 
to the first chapter, " But Israel doth not know Me." He 
might have read not that, but " from the sole of the foot, 
even unto the head, there is no soundness in it." He pas- 
sed by the 35 th chapter — " Then the eyes of the blind shall 
be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped." 
He might have read that but Calvary had got to have a 
victory before that could be said. He passed over the 9th 
chapter, he passed over the 40th chapter. He might have 
told them — he might have turned to the 55 th chapter. He 
had not been wounded, he had not yet gone through 
Gethsemane. But we read that he found the place where 

5 



66 GLAD TIDINGS. 

it is written, " The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because 
He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor." 
And that was the commencement of his ministry, and that 
was on his going back to Nazareth. And in that 6ist 
chapter of Isaiah he stopped, right in the middle of a 
sentence. There were seven things he had come to do. 
He read that part which was that he had come to preach 
the Gospel to the poor, The next Was, " He hath sent me 
to heal the broken-hearted." Wasn't that good tidings ? 
You would think that was good tidings, wouldn't you ? The 
next was He had come to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
and the next was the recovery of sight to the blind, and to 
set at liberty them that are bruised, and to open the doors 
to the captive, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the 
Lord, and he closed the book. And the eyes of the whole 
congregation were upon Him. The next sentence which He 
omitted was, " The day of vengeance is at hand." I have 
an idea when the Prophet Isaiah wrote those words he did 
not fully see the first and second coming of Christ, that 
has already passed, and the day of vengeance has not come. 
So it seems as if the Prophet Isaiah did not see the first 
and second coming of our Lord. 

Christ shut up the book ; He will come back by and by 
and He will open the book, and He will commence to read 
where He left off. You can cry for mercy then, but the 
door will be shut. But Christ did not come to condemn 
sinners. He came to save them. I have not come to New 
York to preach, " The day of vengeance is at hand." I 
have come to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

I have come to tell you the good tidings. Christ did 
not come into the world to condemn the world, but that 
through Him the world might be saved. In the 9th chap- 
ter of Luke you will read that He called his 12 disciples 
together and gave them power and authority over devils 
and to heal the sick • that is what He came for — to preach 



" THE GOSPEL." 67 

the gospel of God. And to heal the sick. Then in the 
next chapter He calls around Him the seventy — He had 
appointed other seventy, also, and He sent them, two and 
two, before His face into every city and place whither He 
Himself would come. Now we find that He had come 
into the world just to bring glad tidings. Did you ever 
see or hear of any one that didn't like to receive glad ti- 
dings ? Now one proof that people don't believe the Bible 
is when they wear long faces, as if they had accepted an in- 
vitation to an execution. That ain't the Gospel. The 
Gospel is good tidings of great joy which shall be to all 
people, " for unto us is born this day in the city of David 
a Saviour." I don't believe that better news ever fell upon 
the ears of mortal man than the news of the Gospel. I 
don't believe any man. ever heard better tidings, and it is 
glad tidings of heaven. God never had but one Son, and 
He called Him to send that good news : " The spirit of the 
Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach 
the gospel to the poor." We find that Moses was anointed. 
He went down into Egypt and death followed. When he 
was opposed, look at the plagues that fell upon the Egypt- 
ians. We find that the Spirit of God was upon Elijah. 
When he wanted to protect himself, men lost their lives. 
The 50 came to get Elisha, and he called fire down from 
heaven, and he was taken up to heaven. The spirit came 
down upon Gideon, and when men came out to meet him he 
slew them by thousands. The Spirit of God came upon 
Samson and he slew men by thousands. The spirit came 
upon the holy men of old, but when Christ comes, He says, 
" the spirit of the Lord is upon me " — not to take men's 
lives — the only man that lost anything was the man that 
lost his ear. Peter's faith got lukewarm, and he cut off a 
servant's ear, but the Lord gave it back to him. I don't 
suppose he lost it more than five minutes, and it was just 
as good as ever when he got it back. I don't suppose 
you could find a scar there. 



63 GLAD TIDINGS. 

Christ says, " I did not come to destroy men's liveSj^. I 
came to save them." And it seems to me to be the 
greatest madness that the world don't receive Christ. That 
we should have to coax and to entreat men to receive 
Christ, isn't it a mystery ? Suppose while I am preaching, 
suppose a messenger should come in and bring a letter that 
brought good tidings to that mother ? Don't you suppose 
she would be glad to receive it. Suppose it told her that 
her boy who has been gone for ten years has returned. 
He ran away ten years ago, and the messenger comes in 
and states that he that ran away has got home. Don't 
you think that mother's face would light up ? I could see it 
in her countenance, and so when I preach the Gospel 
I can't help but see those that believe. It lights up their 
faces. Look at our churches, how the people throng to 
them to hear the Gospel. Let a man preach about some- 
thing else than the Gospel, and see if the people would 
throng to them. There is a void in every one's heart that 
will never be filled until they receive the Gospel of Christ. 

Now I want to tell you why I like the Gospel, for I 
don't believe God calls on us to believe the Gospel with- 
out giving us good reason ; and I don't believe He would 
call it good news unless He gave us a reason. Now it has 
taken. out of my path four of the most bitter enemies I had. 
The xvth chapter of Corinthians tells us that the last 
enemy that shall be destroyed shall be death. I see by 
the badges of mourning among you that many of you have 
lost loved ones. Many of you know what it is to have 
death come to your door when some loved child has been 
taken from your bosom. Now I don't know but some of 
you will say, "If a person is afraid of death, he is a 
coward." I don't believe there is a man or woman that 
ever lived who is not afraid of death unless they knew 
that Jesus Christ would overcome death. Before I knew 
the Son of God as my Saviour death was a terrible enemy 






" THE GOSPEL." 69 

to me. Now up in that little New England village where I 
came from, in that little village it was the custom to toll 
the bell whenever anyone died, and to toll one stroke for 
every year. Sometimes they would toll 70 strokes for a 
man of 70, or 40 strokes for a man of 40. I used to think 
when they died at 70 and sometimes at 80, well, that is a 
good ways off. But sometimes it would be a child at my 
age, and then it used to be very solemn. Sometimes I 
could not bear to sleep in a room alone. Death used to 
trouble me, but, thanks to God, it don't trouble me now. 
If He should send His messenger, and the messenger 
should come up here on this platform and say to me, " Mr. 
Moody, your hour is come, I have got to take you away," 
it would be joyful news for me ; for though I should be 
absent from the body, I should be present with the Lord. 
Through the world I can shout, " Oh death, where is thy 
sting ? " And I hear the voice, I hear the voice — buried in 
the bosom of the Son of God. That is what Calvary 
means. The wages of sin is death, but He took the wages 
Himself. That is the Gospel of the Son of God, and there 
is no fear for them who believe in Christ Jesus. There 
was Paul ; he had got virtually over death. Let death 
come — " O death, where is thy sting ? " Sometimes I used 
to go into a graveyard when, some one was about to lie 
down in that narrow house, and when the sexton would shovel 
x and throw the dirt in on the coffin, it would be like a death- 
knell to my soul. I would hear him say, " Dust to dust, 
ashes to ashes." Now I can measure its depths. I can 
shout as Paul did; I can say, "O death, where is thy 
sting ? " But this soul of man shall go into the house not 
made with hands eternal in the heavens. O the grave is 
lost in victory. It is lost in Christ. 

O the blessed Gospel of the Son of God, what can we 
do without it ? When we lay our little children away in 
death they shall rise again. I was going into a cemetery 



;o 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



once, and over the entrance I saw these words : " They 
shall rise again." Infidelity didn't teach that ; we got 
that from this book. O the blessed Gospel of the Son of 
God ! How every one of you ought to believe it ! Young 
lady, if you have been careless up to this afternoon, O 
may you get awake. May you this hour not hesitate to 
turn from your sins unto God and believe the Gospel of 
His Son. I used to be a good deal troubled with my sins, 
and I thought of the day of judgment, when all the sins 
that I had committed in secret should blaze out before the 
assembled universe. But when a man comes to Christ the 
Gospel tells him they are all gone, and in Jesus Christ he 
is a new creature. All I know is that out of the love 
which my Lord has for me He has taken all my sins and cast 
them behind His back. That is, behind God's back. How 
is Satan to get at it ? If God has forgiven our sins, they 
won't be mentioned. In Ezekiel we are told not one of 
them shall be mentioned. Isn't it a glorious thing to have 
all our sins blotted out ? And there is another thought, 
and that is the Judgment. You know if a man has com- 
mitted some great crime, when he is to be brought into 
judgment how he dreads it ! How he .dreads that day 
when he is to be brought into court, when he is put into a 
box and witnesses are to come up and testify against him, 
and he is there to be judged ! But, my friends, the Gospel 
tells us that if we come to Christ, we shall never come into 
judgment. Why? Because Christ was judged for us. 
He was wounded for our transgressions. If He has been 
wounded for us, we haven't got to be wounded. " Verily, 
verily," — which means truly, truly — " I say unto you " — 
now just put your name in there — "He that heareth my 
words, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath" — h-a-t-h, 
hath. It don't say you shall have when you die. It says, 
hath — " He that heareth my words and believeth on Him 
that sent me hath everlasting; life, and shall not come into 



THE gospel:' 



n 



condemnation." That means into judgment. He sha'n't 
come into judgment, but is passed "from death into life." 
There is judgment out of the way. He shall never come 
into judgment. Why ? Because God has forgiven us and 
given us eternal life. That is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
Ought people to be gloomy and put on long faces when 
that is the news ? 

Away out on the frontier of our country, out on the 
prairies, where men sometimes go to hunt or for other pur- 
poses, the grass in the dry seasons sometimes catches fire, 
and you will see the flames uprise twenty or thirty feet high, 
and you will see those flames rolling over the Western desert 
faster than any fleet horse can run. Now what do the 
men do ? They know it is sure death unless they can 
make some escape. They would tiy to run away perhaps 
if they had fleet horses. But they can't, that fire goes 
faster than the fleetest horse can run. What do they do ? 
Why, they just take a match and they light the grass from 
it, and away it burns, and then they get into that burnt 
district. The fire comes on, and there they stand per- 
fectly secure. There they stand perfectly secure — -nothing 
to fear. Why ? Because the fire has burned all there is 
to burn. Take your stand there on Mount Calvary. The 
Gospel of Jesus Christ is to whosoever will come. I thank 
God that I can come to this City of New York with a Gospel 
that is free to all. It is free to the most abandoned. Still 
it may be there are some wives that have got discouraged 
and disheartened. I can tell you the joyful news that your 
husband and your sons have not gone so far but that the 
grace of God can save them. The Son of God came to 
raise up the most abandoned. I noticed on my way down 
this morning, not less than four or five tramps. They 
looked w r eary and tired. I suppose they had slept on the 
sidewalk last night. I thought I would like to have time 
just to stop and tell them about the Son of God, and how 



72 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



Christ loved them. The Gospel of the Son of God is to 
tell us how He loves us. He takes our feet out of the pit 
and He puts our feet on to the Rock of Ages. And that, my 
dear friends, is what Christ wants to do, and don't think 
that there isn't some one in your homes but that He wants 
to save. Tell them there is none too abandoned, none so 
young, none so fallen, but that God can save them. There 
was William Dorset, and the power of the Lord was upon 
him, and in closing his meeting one night, he said there 
wasn't a man in London so far gone but that the Lord 
could save him. There was Whitfield, and the Spirit of 
the Lord was upon him, and he said, " God is so anxious 
to save souls that he will take the devil's castaway." 
Whitfield said that the Lord would take the devil's cast- 
away. Dorset said there was no man in London so far 
gone but that the Lord would save him. There was a lady 
missionary whom I knew, who found a man who said there 
was no hope for him ; he had sent away his day of grace. 
She went to Mr. Dorset and said to him, " Mr. Dorset, 
will you go down and see him and tell him what you said ? " 
Mr. Dorset said he would be glad to go and see him. He 
went up into a five-story house, and away up in the garret 
he found a young man lying upon some straw. He bent 
over him and whispered into his ear and called him his 
friend. The young man looked startled. He says, "You 
are mistaken in the person when you say, ' My friend.' I 
have got no friends. No one cares for me." Mr. Dorset 
told him that Christ was as much his friend as of any man 
in London. Poor prodigal ! And after he had talked 
with him for some time, he prayed with him, and then he 
read to him out of the Bible, and at last the light of the 
Gospel began to break in upon that darkened heart. This 
young man said to Mr. Dorset he thought he could die 
happy if he knew his father was willing to forgive him. 
Mr. Dorset said to him, " Where does your father live ? " 



THE GOSPEL. 



73 



The young man said he lived in the West End of London. 
Mr. Dorset said, " I will go and see him, and see if he 
won't forgive you." But the young man said, " No, I don't 
want to have you do that. My father would abuse you if 
you should speak to him about me. He don't recognize 
me as his boy any more." Mr. Dorset said, " I will go and 
see him." He went up the West End of London, where 
he found a very fine mansion, and a servant dressed in 
livery came to the door, and he was ushered into the draw- 
ing-room, and presently the father, a bright, majestic look- 
ing man, came into the room. Mr. Dorset held out his 
hand to shake hands with him, and said, " You have a son 
by the name of Joseph, have you not ? " And when the 
father heard that, he refused to shake hands with him, and 
was going out of the room. The father said, " If you have 
come up here to talk about that worthless vagabond, I 
want you to leave the house. He is no son of mine." Mr. 
Dorset said, " He is yours now, but he won't be long ; but 
he is yours now." "Is Joseph sick?" said the man. 
" Yes," said Mr. Dorset, "he is dying. I haven't come 
for money. I will see that he has a decent burial. I have 
only come to ask you to forgive him ? " " Forgive him ! 
forgive him ! " said the father, " I would have forgiven him 
long ago if I thought he wanted me to. Do you know 
where he is ? " "Yes, Sir, he is in the East End of Lon- 
don." " Can you take me to him ? " " Yes, Sir, I will 
take you to him." And the father ordered out his carriage, 
and he was on his way. When we got there he said, " Did 
you find my boy here ? Oh, if I had known he wanted me 
to, I would have taken him home long ago." When the 
father went into that room he could hardly recognize his 
long lost boy. The father went over and kissed the boy, 
and the father says to him, " I would have forgiven you 
long, long ago, if I had known you wanted me to. Let my 
servant order the carriage and take you home." But the 



74 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



boy said, "No father, I am dying; but I can die now 
happy in this garret, that I know you are willing to forgive 
me." And he told his father how Jesus had received him, 
and in a little while he breathed his last, and out of that 
dark garret he rose up into the kingdom of God. Oh, my 
friends, there may be some one in New York who would 
rejoice to hear such words. Oh, here is a Christian, shall 
he not publish it ? And you that are not Christians, won't 
you come into the kingdom ? Oh, that to-day you may re- 
ceive Christ, is the prayer, I believe, of the hundreds that 
are gathered here. 



II. THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW 
TESTAMENT. 



You that were here last night remember I was speaking 
on the text — the 4th of Luke, 18th verse : " The spirit of 
the Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach 
the Gospel." I want to continue the subject we had last 
night. We don't want to get over that word " Gospel " 
too soon. It is too precious. And I don't know but it 
would be well to preach the same thing over and over 
again here, until you believe it. I heard of a minister 
who preached the same sermon three times, and some of 
the brethren went to him, and told him he had better 
preach another sermon, and he said when his congregation 
believed that, he would preach another sermon, but he 
didn't propose to do so until they did. 

" The spirit of the Lord is upon me because He hath 
anointed me to preach the Gospel." Now, the question is, 
who shall the Gospel be preached to ? There is a certain 
class of people who seem to think the Gospel is very good 
for drunkards and thieves and vagabonds, but there are so 
many of these self-righteous Pharisees to-day who are 
drawing their filthy rags of seif-righteousness around them 
and thinking the Bible is for a certain class. If I under- 
stand the Bible correctly, the Gospel is for all. We read 
in the last chapter of Mark — almost the last words the 
Son of God uttered on this earth were to His disciples — 
" Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every 
creature." When we come to the Gospel, there is no dis- 

75 



7 6 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



tinction ; rich and poor must be served alike ; learned and 
unlearned ; all have to come into the Kingdom of God 
one way, and that is by believing the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. Now these words were uttered after Christ had 
tasted death for every man. Gethsemane now was behind 
Him ; Calvary, with all its horrors, was past ; He was just 
ready to go home to take His seat at the right hand of the 
Father ; He was just giving the disciples his parting mes- 
sage. In other' words, He was giving them his commission 
to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every 
creature. " And he that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned." 

I can just imagine all that little band of disciples who 
stood around Him, those unlearned men of Galilee, those 
fishermen who had been associated with Him for three 
years — I can imagine the tears trickling down their cheeks 
as he talked of leaving them, and one of them thinking 
that the Lord didn't really mean that, that He didn't mean 
they should preach the Gospel to every creature — for he 
had hard work to make them believe that the Gospel 
should be preached to the Gentiles. It seemed as if the 
Jews wanted to keep the Gospel in Palestine ; but by 
the grace of God it would flow out ; it would go to the 
world because He had given orders that the Gospel 
should be preached to every creature. And now we find 
the messengers going to the four corners of the earth to 
proclaim the glad tidings of the Gospel of Christ. But I 
can imagine that Peter says : " Lord, you don't really 
mean that we shall preach the Gospel to those men that 
murdered you, to those men that took your life ? " " Yes," 
says the Lord, "go and preach the Gospel to those Jeru- 
salem sinners." I can imagine Him saying : " Go and 
hunt up that man that put the cruel crown of thorns upon 
My brow, and preach the Gospel to him. Tell him he shall 
have a crown in My kingdom without a thorn in it. He 



//. THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 77 

may sit upon My throne if he will accept of salvation as a 
gift. Go hunt up that man that spat in My face, and 
preach the Gospel to him and offer him salvation, and tell 
him he can be* saved if he is only cleansed by the blood I 
have shed at Calvary. Go to the man that thrust the spear 
into My side and tell him there is a way. Tell him there 
is nothing but love in My heart for him. Go preach the 
Gospel to every creature." And after he had gone up on 
high, we find the holy Ghost came down upon the tenth 
day, and then they began to preach, and now see Peter, 
standing there upon the day of Pentecost and preaching 
the Gospel of God to sinners ; and John Bunyan says, " If 
a Jerusalem sinner can be saved there is hope for us all." 
Do you think God is mocking ? Do you think God is 
preaching to you and then not giving you the power to 
take it ? The Gospel is preached to every creature, and do 
you think He is not willing that every creature shall be 
saved on the face of the earth ? 

Now, I like to proclaim the Gospel, because it is to be 
proclaimed to all. When I see a poor drunkard, when I 
see a thief, when I see a prisoner in yonder prison, it is a 
grand, glorious thing, to go and proclaim to him the glad 
tidings, because I know he can be saved. There is not 
one that has gone so far or fallen so low but that he can 
be saved ; because every one of God's proclamations are 
headed " whosoever." That takes in all ; nobody is left 
out. Somebody said he had rather have " whosoever " 
than his name, because he would be afraid it was some 
other man who might have had his name. This was well 
brought out in a prison the other day, when the chaplain 
said to me, " I want to tell you a scene that occurred here 
some time ago. Our Commissioners went to the Governor 
of the State and got him to give his consent to pardon 
out five men for good behavior. The Governor said the 
record was to be kept in secret ; the men were to know 



7 8 GLAD TIDINGS. 

nothing about it, and at the end of six months the men 
were brought out, the roll was called, and the President of 
the Commission came up and spoke to them ; then putting 
his hands in his pocket he drew out the papers and said 
to those noo convicts, ' I hold in my hand pardons for 
five men.' I never witnessed anything like it. Every man 
held his breath and it was as silent as death. Then the 
Commissioners went on to tell how' they got these pardons; 
how it was the Governor had given them," and the chaplain 
said the suspense was so great that he spoke up to the 
Commissioner and told him to first read the names of 
those pardoned before he spoke further, and the first name 
read out was, " Reuben Johnson will come out and get his 
pardon." He held out the paper, but no one came. He 
looked all around, expecting to see a man spring to his 
feet at once ; still no one arose, and he turned to the 
officer of the prison and said : " Are all the convicts here ? " 
" Yes," was the reply. " Then, Reuben Johnson will come 
and get his pardon." The real Reuben Johnson was all 
this time looking around to see where Reuben was ; and 
the chaplain beckoned to him, and he turned and looked 
around and behind him, thinking some other man must be 
meant. A second time he beckoned to Reuben, and called 
to him, and a second time the man looked around to see 
where Reuben was, until at last the chaplain said to him, 
" You are the man, Reuben ; " and he got up out of his 
seat and sank back again, thinking it could not be true. 
He had been there for 19 years, having been placed there 
for life, and when he came up and took his pardon he 
could hardly believe his eyes, and he went back to his seat 
and wept like a child ; and then, when the convicts were 
marched back to their cells, Reuben had been so long in 
the habit of falling into line and taking the lock step with 
the rest that he fell into his place, and the chaplain had to 
say, " Reuben, come out ; you are a free man." 



//. THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 79 

That is the way men make out their pardon — for 
good behavior ; but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is offered 
to those that have not behaved well. It is offered to all 
that have sinned and are not worthy. All a man has got 
to prove now is that he is not worthy and I will show him 
that Christ died for him. Christ died for us while we 
were yet in sin. While we were in London, Mr. Spurgeon 
one day took Mr. Sankey and myself to his orphan asylum, 
and he was telling about them — that some of them had 
aunts and some cousins, and that every boy had some 
friend that took an interest in him, and came to see him 
and gave him a little pocket money, and one day he said 
while he stood there a little boy came up to him and said, 
" Mr. Spurgeon, let me speak to you, ' ' and the boy sat down 
between Mr. Spurgeon and the elder who was with the 
clergyman and said, " Mr. Spurgeon, suppose your father 
and mother were dead, and you didn't have any cousins, or 
aunts, or uncles, or friends to come to give you pocket 
money and give you presents, don't you think you would 
feel bad — because that's me ! " Said Mr. Spurgeon, " the 
minute he asked that, I put my right hand down into my 
pocket and took out the money." Because that's me ! And 
so with the Gospel ; we must say to those who have sinned, 
the Gospel is offered to them. 

As I was talking last night in the inquiry room, a man 
tried to tell me that he had made many mistakes, but had 
committed no sins. They were all mistakes instead of sins. 
Better call things by their right names. We have all sinned. 
There is no righteousness, and there is no man that has 
walked the streets that has not broken the law of God. 
Therefore all need a Saviour, and there is no chance of our 
being saved, no hope of man being saved, unless he will 
admit first that he has sinned and is lost. Of course if a 
man has not sinned he won't need a Saviour, but it is just 
because we have sinned that we need the Gospel. Now, as 



g GLAD TIDINGS. 

I stated last night, the Gospel is the very best tidings that 
can come to us. Christ comes to bless us. In Glasgow 
they were telling me of a scene that occurred when Dr. Ar- 
nott was preaching there. A woman was in great distress 
about her rent. She could not pay it, and so he took some 
money, and went around to the house, — went to the door and 
knocked. He listened, and thought he heard the footsteps 
of some one inside, and so he knocked louder. No one 
came, and he knocked still louder, but after waiting some 
time he went away disappointed. A few days afterward he 
met this lady on the street at Glasgow and told her that he 
heard she had been in great distress and he went around to 
help her, and the woman threw up both hands and said, 
" Why, Doctor, that was not you, was it ? I was in the 
house all the time, and I thought it was the landlord com- 
ing around to get the rent, and I kept the door bolted." 
Now, Christ comes to bless. He don't come to demand. 
He don't come to ask you to do something that you cannot 
do. He comes to bless you. When He commenced His 
Sermon on the Mount, what did He say ? " Blessed ! 
blessed ! blessed ! " When He got ready to go back to 
heaven, He raised His hands over that little company and 
breathed upon them blessings. And so, my friends, He 
comes into this building to-night to bless you ; to help you ■ 
He offers to be your salvation ; He offers to pay all the 
debt you owe. You owe God a debt you cannot pay. Can 
you forget this ? You have broken the law of God. What 
are you going to do with the sins you have committed ? 

What is your hope ? Why there is no hope unless the 
Lord Jesus Christ blots out your sins with His own body, 
unless Christ pays the penalty. If Christ settles the claim, 
why the claim is settled for all time. And that is the doc- 
trine of the Bible, the glorious doctrine of substitution. 
Christ paid the penalty, Christ died in our stead. There 
was a man converted in Europe several years ago, and he 



II. THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 81 

liked the Gospel so well, he thought he would like to go and 
publish it. Well, he started out to publish it, and great 
crowds came to hear him out of curiosity, just as a great 
many come here out of curiosity, to hear the singing or 
something of that kind. Well, they came to hear him. 
The man wasn't much of a speaker, so the next night there 
wasn't many there, and the the third night the man didn't 
get a hearer. But he was anxious to publish the Gospel, 
and so he got some great placards and posted them all over 
the town, that if there was any man in that town that was 
in debt, to come to his office between certain hours on a 
certain day with the proof of their indebtedness, and he 
would pay the debt. Well, of course it went all over the 
town, but the people didn't believe him. One man said to 
his neighbor, "John, do you believe this man will pay our 
debts ? " " Oh, of course not ; that is a great sell ; that is 
a hoax." The day came, and instead of there being a great 
rush, there didn't anybody come. 

Now, it is a great wonder that there isn't a great rush 
of men into the Kingdom of God to have their debts paid 
when a man can be saved for nothing. About 10 o'clock 
there was a man walking in front of the office ; he looked 
this way and that to see if there was anybody looking, and 
and by and by he was satisfied there wasn't anybody look- 
ing, and he slipped in, and he said, " 1 saw a notice around 
town if any one would call here at a certain hour you would 
pay their debt. Is there any truth in it ? " " Yes," says 
the man, " it is quite true. Did you bring around the ne- 
cessary papers ? " " Yes." And after the man had paid 
the debt he said, " Sit down, I want to talk to you," and he 
kept him there until 12 o'clock. And before 12 o'clock 
had passed there were two more came in and had their 
debts paid. At 12 o'clock he let them all out, when they 
found some other men standing around the door, and they 
said, " Well, you found he was willing to pay your debts, 



82 GLAD TIDINGS. 

didn't you ? " Yes, they said, it was quite true that he had 
paid their debts. " O, if this is so, we are going to get our 
debts paid." And they went in, but it was. too late. The 
man said if they had called within a certain hour he would 
have paid their debts. 

To every one of you that is a bankrupt sinner — and 
you never saw a sinner in the world but that he was a bank- 
rupt sinner — Christ conies and He says, " I will pay the 
debt." And that is just what He wants to do to-night. 
Bear in mind that the Son of God came into the world to 
save sinners, and He has got the power to forgive sin. 
And He has not only got the power, but He is willing to 
save, and He is anxious to save ; and so, my friends, if you 
will accept Christ's offer you can get out of this hall to- 
night cleansed of all sin. 

Now the question comes, " Who will accept of Him ? " 
But I can imagine there is a man down in the audience 
who will say, " Well, I don't think a man can be saved so 
easy. I don't believe in these sudden conversions. I 
don't believe a man can come in here and be saved at once." 
What is it God has got ? Is it a gift ? Now we read in 
the sixth chapter of Romans, it is a gift: "The wages of 
sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through 
Jesus Christ our Lord." Now, if a man is saved, there 
must be one minute when he has not got the gift, and 
there must be another minute when he has it. And that 
is what it is represented in the Bible. It is a gift. ll Well," 
some one says, " haven't I got to feel something before I 
can be saved? How much have I got to give up?" 
" Give up your sins ! " No, you have never to give them 
up, for if you just take Christ they will go of themselves. 
They will all flee away in the dim past. But you can't do 
it of yourself. I tried for a long time to give up my sins 
of myself, and I couldn't do it. But the moment I took 
Christ He snapped the cords, and I have been rejoicing 



//. THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 83 

these twenty years. And the way to be saved is not to 
delay, but to come and take — t-a-k-e, take. 

When I was in Glasgow a lady said to me, "You use 
that word ' take ' very frequently. Is there anything of 
that kind in the Bible ? I can't find it. I think you must 
have manufactured that word." Why, in the Bible it says : 
" The Spirit and the bride say come. Let him that heareth 
say come ; let him that is athirst, come ; and whosoever 
will, let him take of the water of life freely." And if God 
says let him take, He will supply him. If that boy will 
take Christ, who can stop him ? All hell and all earth 
cannot stop him. If need be, God would send ten thou- 
sand legions of angels to help him on his way up. I tell 
you, if you are not saved it is because you won't. You 
will not come unto Him that you may have life. The door 
hangs on that hinge. If a man says, " I will rise and go 
to Him," it won't wait. When the prodigal came home it 
wasn't when he got home that the change took place. It 
was away, away off in that foreign country, when he said, 
" I will arise and go to my father." I think with men the 
turning point will be when they say, " I will come, for I ^ 
want. to." If you want to go to heaven, the first thing is 
to make up your mind to go. If I want to go to Chicago, 
the first thing I do is to make up my mind to go. 
And if you are willing to go to Christ, there is 
no power on earth can keep you away. Now, these 
men who say they can't come, just be honest and 
put in the right word and say you won't come. At 
one time my sister had trouble with her little boy, and 
the father said, " Why, Sammy, you must go now and ask 
your mother's forgiveness." The little fellow said he 
wouldn't. The father says, " You must. If you don't go 
and ask your mother's forgiveness I shall have to undress 
you and put you to bed." He was a blight, nervous little 
fellow, never still a moment, and the father thought he 



8 4 GLAD TIDINGS. 

would have such a dread of being undressed and put to 
bed. But the little fellow wouldn't, so they undressed 
him and put him to bed. The father went to his business, 
and when he came home at noon he said to his wife : 
" Has Sammy asked your forgiveness ? " " No," she said, 
he hasn't." So the father went to him and said, " Why, 
Sammy, why don't you ask your mother's forgiveness ? " 
The little fellow shook his head, "Won't doit." "But, 
Sammy, you have got to." " Couldn't." The father went 
down to his office, and stayed all the afternoon, and 
when he came home he asked his wife, " Has Sammy 
asked your forgiveness ? " " No, I took something up to 
him and tried to have him eat, but he wouldn't." So the 
father went up to see him, and said, " Now, Sammy, just 
ask your mother's forgiveness, and you may be dressed 
and come down to supper with us." " Couldn't do it." 
The father coaxed, but the little fellow " couldn't do it." 
That was all they could get out of him. You know very 
well he could, but he didn't want to. Now, the hardest 
thing a man has to do is to become a Christian, and it is 
the easiest. That may seem a contradiction, but it isn't. 
The hard point is because he don't want to. The hardest 
thing for a man to do is to give up his will. That night 
they retired, and they thought surely early in the morning 
he will be up ready to ask his mother's forgiveness. The 
father went to him — that was Friday morning — to see if he 
was ready to ask his mother's forgiveness, but he 
" couldn't." The father and mother felt so bad about it 
they couldn't eat ; they thought it was to darken their 
whole life. Perhaps that boy thought that father and 
mother didn't love him. Just what many sinners think 
because God won't let them have their own way. The 
father went to his business, and when he came home he 
said to his wife, " Has Sammy asked your forgiveness ? " 
" No." So he went to the little fellow and said, "Now, 



II. THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



.85 



Sammy, are you not going to ask your mother's forgive- 
ness ? " " Can't," and that was all they could get out of 
him. The father couldn't eat any dinner, it was like death 
in the house. It seemed as if the boy was going to con- 
quer his father and mother. Instead of his little will being 
broken, it looked very much as if he was going to break 
theirs. Late Friday afternoon, " Mother, mother, forgive," 
says Sammy, — "me." And the little fellow said "me," 
and he sprang to his feet and said : " I have said it, I 
have said it. Now dress me, and take me down to see 
father. He will be so glad to know I have said it." And 
she took him down, and when the little fellow came in he 
said, " I've said it, I've said it." Oh, my friends, it is so 
easy to say, " I will arise and go to my God." It is the 
most reasonable thing you can do. Isn't it an unreasona- 
ble thing to hold out ? Come right to God just this very 
hour. " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt 
be saved." And now this night believe, and thou shalt be 
saved. 



REGENERATION. 



I will direct your attention to the third chapter of John 
and the third verse : "J-esus aiiswered and said unto him. 
Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again he 
camiot see the Kingdom of God.'" You will see by the third 
chapter of Romans that it is absolutely necessary that a 
man be born again. You see in the third chapter of Ro- 
mans what man is by nature. If you want to find out 
what God is, turn to the third chapter of John : " God so 
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believes on Him shall have everlasting life." 
Yes, read the third chapter of Romans if you want to find 
out how man lost life. Then read the third chapter of 
John, and read it prayerfully and with God's spirit in you, 
and you will see how man is going to get everlasting life 
back again. I don't know a chapter that ought to be read 
more in a Christian spirit and read more deeply than that 
chapter. It is so plain and* reasonable. If there are a 
thousand people here to-night who want to know what 
love God has for them, let them read the third chapter of 
John and they will find it there, and find eternal life. 
They need not go out of this hall to-night to find eternal 
life. They will find it here in this chapter, and find eternal 
life before these services close. They hear to-night how 
the way for salvation of their souls is open to them. Yes, 
I do not know anything more important than this subject 

86 



REGENERATION. 87 

of Regeneration. I don't know of anything in the Bible 
more important and more plain than that, and yet it is a 
question that neither the Church nor the world is sound 
upon. There is no question upon which the Church and 
the world are more confounded than upon this very ques- 
tion of Regeneration. If a man is sound on every other 
subject, you will find that he is unsound on this plain sub- 
ject of Regeneration. It is the very foundation of our 
hope, and the very foundation of our religion. It is a great 
deal better, with God's help, to understand this question 
perfectly first, than to go on further in the Word of God. It 
is a solemn question — " Am I born of the Spirit ? Have 
I been born again ? " For you know that " except a man 
be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." 

Now, let me say what regeneration is not. It is not go- 
ing to church. Very often I see people and ask them if they 
are Christians. " Yes, of course I am, at least I think I 
am ; I go to church every Sunday." Why, I could say to 
them, the very devil goes to church every Sunday, and no 
one goes more regularly to church than he does. If you 
go down in the dark alleys and by-ways of the city, and do 
all the good you can, preach God's word and show God's 
love to these abandoned beings — I tell you that is not re- 
generation. No ! no ! It is a false idea that you get re- 
generated by scattering the seed of God by the wayside. 
Why, if going to church was regeneration — being born again 
— there is hope even for Satan himself. But there never 
was a church erected but that the devil was the first to 
enter and the last to leave. There is no one, I tell you, 
who is a more regular attendant. But still there is another 
class of Christians, or who think they are Christians. 
They say, "I am trying to do what is right — am I not a 
Christian ! Is not that a new birth ?" No ; I tell you, 
no. What has that to do with being born again ? There 
is yet another class — those who have turned over a new 



88 GLAD TIDINGS. 

leaf and think they are regenerated, No ; forming a new 
resolution is not being born again. That will not do you 
any good. 

Nor will being baptized do you any good. Yet you 
hear people say, " Why, I have been baptized, and I was 
born again when I was baptized." They believe that be- 
cause they are baptized into the church, they are baptized 
into the Kingdom of God. I tell you that is utterly im- 
possible. You may be baptized into the visible church, 
and yet not be baptized into the Son of God. Baptism is 
all right in its place. God forbid that I should say any- 
thing against it. But if you put that in the place of regen- 
eration — in the place of a new birth — it is a terrible mis- 
take. You cannot be baptized into the Kingdom of God. 
If I thought I could baptize men into the Kingdom of 
God, it would be a good deal better for me to do that than 
to preach. I should get a bucket of water and go up and 
down the streets, and save men that way. If they would 
not let me do it while they were awake, I would do it while 
they were asleep. I would do it any how. For " except 
a man be born again he cannot enter into the Kingdom of 
God." If any one here to-night rests his hopes on any- 
thing else — any other foundation — I pray to God that He 
may sweep it away from him. You may be baptized into 
the church and not be disciples of Jesus Christ. 1 say to 
you, do not rest your hopes on that foundation. Another 
class says, " I go to the Lord's Supper ; I partake uni- 
formly of the Sacrament." Blessed ordinance ! Jesus 
hath said that as often as ye do it ye commemorate His 
death. Yet, that is not being born again ; that is not 
passing from death unto life. It says plainly — and so 
plainly that there need not be any mistake about it. Ex- 
cept you are born of the spirit, ye cannot enter into the 
Kingdom of God. What has a sacrament to do with that ? 
What has baptism to do with being born again ? What 



REGENERA TION. 89 

has going to church to do with being born again ? But 
another man comes up and says, " I say my prayers regu- 
lar." Still I say that that is not being born again. That is 
not being born of the spirit. 

It is a very solemn question, then, that comes up before 
us, and would that every one should ask himself earnestly 
and faithfully : " Have I been born again ? Have I been 
born of the spirit? Have I passed from death unto life?" 
Now there is another class of men who say that these meet- 
ings are very good for a certain class of people. That 
they would be very good if you could get the drunkard 
here, or get the gambler here, or get other vicious people 
here — that would do a great deal of good. There are cer- 
tain men, that need to be converted, who say : " Who did 
Christ say this to ? Who was Nicodemus ? Was he a 
drunkard, a gambler, or a thief ? " He was one of the very 
best men in Jerusalem ; no doubt about that. He was an 
honorable Councillor ; he belonged to the Sanhedrim ; he 
held a very high position ; he was one of the best men in 
the state ; he was an orthodox man • he was one of the 
very soundest men. Why, if he were here to-day he would 
be made a President of one of our colleges ; he would be 
put at once into one of our seminaries, and have the 
" Reverend " put before, his name — " Reverend Nicode- 
mus, D.D.," or even " LL.D." And yet, what did Christ 
say to him ? " Except a man be born again, he cannot 
see the Kingdom of God." So said He to the woman in 
the fourth chapter of John. In the eighth chapter, you see 
an example of self-righteousness, when the Pharisees were 
talking to him. Well, there are Pharisees at the present 
day who rely upon their own merits and their own great- 
ness. They say to you, " Oh, yes, these meetings are very 
good for the abandoned and the outcasts, and the unfor- 
tunate ; they are very good for immoral men ; but we are 
moral. Tell these things to men who are not moral." 



9 o GLAD TIDINGS. 

They seem to think that when Jesus said, " Ye must be 
born again," he meant some one else that must be born 
again — didn't mean them at all. ' You see John the Be- 
loved, when walking through the streets, and you say to 
him, " I met your Master last night — I went around to see 
Him." John would say, " How did you like Him ? " His 
friend would reply, " I never met such a person in my life ; 
never heard a man talk as He did. What He told me has 
been ringing in my ears ever since. He told me that God 
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son 
that whosoever believed on Him should not perish but 
have everlasting life." " John, does your Master talk that 
way all the time ? " " Yes, He always talks in that way." 
That man will never forget that interview. He was found 
in the dark by Christ ; he was directed into the right way ; 
in that way he will ever continue, and there is not a thing 
he would not do for Jesus. See Nicodemus. He, with 
Joseph of Arimathea, took down the body of Jesus and 
brought it away, and stayed by Jesus to the last. I never 
knew a man that had a personal interview with Jesus, that 
did not stay by him. Oh, make up your mind that you 
will seek Him and follow Him until you have an interview 
with Him, for never man spake as that man spake. He 
is just the man that every one wants. 

But I can imagine some one says, " If that is to have a 
new birth, what am I to do ? I can't create life. I certainly 
can't save myself." You certainly can't, and we don't 
preach that you can. We tell you it is' utterly impossible 
to make a man better without Christ, and that is what men 
are trying to do. They are trying to patch up this old 
Adam's nature. There must be a new creation. Regener- 
ation is a new creation, and if it is a new creation it must 
be the work of God. In the first chapter of Genesis man 
don't appear. There is no one there but God. Man is 
not there to help or take part. When God created the 



REGENERATION. gr 

earth He was alone. When God redeemed the world 
He was alone. " That which is born of the flesh is flesh, 
and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." The Ethio- 
pian cannot change his skin and the leopard cannot change 
his spots. When I was in England my little girl said, 
" Papa, why don't those colored people wash themselves 
white ? " You might as well try to make yourselves pure 
and holy without the help of God. It would be just as easy 
for you to do that as for that black man to wash himself 
white. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, neither can 
the leopard change his spots. A man might just as well try 
to leap over the moon as to serve God in the flesh. There- 
fore that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which 
is born of the spirit is spirit. Now God tells us in this 
chapter how we are to get into His Kingdom. We are 
not to work our way in, not but that salvation is worth 
working for. We admit all that. If there were rivers and 
mountains in the way, it would be worth swimming those 
rivers and climbing those mountains. There is no doubt 
that salvation is worth all that, but we don't get it by our 
works, It is to him that worketh not, but believeth. We 
work because we are saved ; we don't work to be saved. 
We work from the Cross but not towards it. Now it is 
written, " Work out your salvation with fear and tremb- 
ling." Why you must have your salvation before you can 
work it out. Suppose I say to my little boy, " Go and 
work out that garden," I must furnish him the garden be- 
fore he can work it out. Suppose I say to him, " I want 
you to spend that $100 carefully." " Well," he says, " let 
me have the $100 and I will be careful how I spend it." I 
remember when I first left home and went to Boston, I had 
spent all my money, and I went to the post-office three 
times a day. I knew there was only one mail a day from 
home, but I thought by some possibility there might be a 
letter for me. At last I got a letter from my little sister, 



9 2 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



and I was awful glad to get it. She had heard that there 
were a great many pickpockets in Boston, and a large part 
of that letter was to have me be very careful not to let any- 
body pick my pocket. Now I had got to have something 
in my pocket in order to have it picked. So you have got 
to have salvation before you can work it out. 

" It is to him that worketh not but believeth." When 
Christ shouted on Calvary, " It is finished," He meant 
what he said. All that men have to do now is just to ac- 
cept of the work of Jesus Christ. There is no hope for a man 
or a woman as long as they are trying to work out their 
salvation. I can imagine there are some people here who 
will say, as Nicodemus did, " this is a very mysterious thing." 
I see the scowl on that Pharisee's brow as he says, " How 
can these things be ? " It sounds very strange to his ear. 
" Born again ; born of the spirit ? How can these things 
be? " A great many people say, " You must reason it out, 
but if you don't reason it out, don't ask us to believe it." 
Now, I can imagine a great many people in this hall saying 
that. When you ask me to reason it out, I tell you frankly 
I can do it. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and you 
hear the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh 
and whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born of the 
spirit." I can't understand all about the wind. You ask 
me to reason it out. I can't. It may blow due north here, 
and up to Boston it may blow due south. I may go up a 
few hundred feet and find it blowing in an entirely opposite 
direction from what it is down here. You ask me to ex- 
plain these currents of wind, but because I can't explain it, 
and because I don't understand it, suppose I stand here 
and assert, " O humph ! there is no such thing as wind." 
I can imagine that little girl down there saying, " I know 
more about it than that man does, often have I heard the 
wind and felt the wind blowing against my face," and she 
says, " Didn't the wind blow my umbrella out of my hands 



REGENERA TION. 93 

the other day, and didn't I see it blow a man's hat off in 
the street? Haven't I seen it blow the trees in the forests 
and the grain in the country." My friends you might just 
as well tell me to-night that there is no wind as to tell 
me there is no such thing as a man born of the spirit. I 
have felt the spirit of God working in my heart just as 
much as I have felt the wind blowing in my face. I can't 
reason it out. There are a great many things I can't rea- 
son out that I believe. I never could reason out the Crea- 
tion. I can see the world, but I can't tell how God made 
it out of nothing. But even these men will admit there is 
a creating power. There is a great many things that I 
can't explain and that I can't reason out, that I believe. I 
heard a commercial traveller say that he had heard that the 
ministry and religion of Jesus Christ was a matter of rev- 
elation and not investigation. " When it pleases God to 
reveal His Son to me," says Paul. There were a party 
of young men together, and these men went back to the 
country, and on their journey they made up their minds 
not to believe anything they could not reason out. An 
old man heard them, and presently he said, " I heard you 
say you would not believe anything you could not reason 
out." " Yes," they said, " that was so." " Well," he said, 
" coming down on the train to-day, I noticed some geese, 
some sheep, some swine, and "some cattle, all eating grass. 
Can you tell me by what process that same grass was 
turned into hair, feathers, bristles and wool ? Do you be- 
lieve it is a fact?" " Oh yes," they said, "we can't help 
believing that, though we fail to see it." " Well said the 
old man, " I can't help believing in Jesus Christ." I can't 
help believing in the regeneration of man when I see men 
that have been reclaimed. I see men that have been 
reformed. Haven't some of the very worst men in the 
city been regenerated — picked up out of the pit and their 
feet put upon the rock and a new song put in their 



94 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



mouth. It was cursing and blaspheming, and now it 
is praising God. Old things have passed away and all 
things have become new ; not reformed only, but regenera- 
ted — a new man in Christ Jesus. 

Look you, (iown there in the dark alleys of New York is 
a poor drunkard. I think if you want to get near hell, go 
to a poor drunkard's home. Go to the house of that poor 
miserable drunkard. Is there anything nearer like hell on 
earth ? See the want and distress that reigns there. But 
hark ! A footstep is heard at the door, and the children 
run and hide themselves. The patient wife waits to meet 
him. The man has been her torment. Many a time she 
has borne about for weeks the marks of blows. Many a 
time that strong right hand has been brought down on her 
defenceless head. And now she waits expecting to hear his 
oaths and suffer his brutal treatment. He comes in and 
says to her : " I have been to the meeting, and I heard 
there that if I will I can be converted. I believe that God 
is able to save me." Go down to that house again in a 
few weeks and what a change ! As you approach you hear 
some one singing. It is not the song of a reveller, but 
they are singing the " Rock of Ages." The children are 
no longer afraid of him, but cluster around his knee. His 
wife is near him, her face lit up with a happy glow. Is 
not that a picture of regeneration ? I can take you to thou- 
sands of such homes, made happy by the regenerating 
power of the religion of Christ. What men want is the 
power to overcome temptation, the power to lead a right 
life. 

The only way to get into the Kingdom of God is to be 
born into it. If the Archangel Gabriel was to wing his 
way here to-night, and we could have a chance to tell him 
all our wishes, we couldn't ask him for a better way of get- 
ting into the Kingdom of God. Christ has made salvation 
ready for us, and all we must do is just to take it. Oh, 



REGENERA TION. 



95 



may we not hesitate to take it ! There is a law in this 
country requiring that the President must be born in the 
country. When foreigners come to our shores they have 
no right to complain against such a law, which forbids 
them from ever becoming Presidents. Now, hasn't God 
a right to make a law that all those who become heirs of 
eternal life must be born into his kingdom ? An unregen- 
erated man would rather be in hell than in heaven. Take 
a man whose heart is full of corruption and wickedness? 
and place him in heaven among the pure, the holy, and 
the redeemed, and he wouldn't want to stay here. My 
friends, if we are to be happy in heaven we must begin to 
make a heaven here on earth. Heaven is a prepared place 
for a prepared people. If a gambler or blasphemer were 
taken out of the streets of New York and placed on the 
crystal pavement of heaven and under the shadow of the 
tree of life* he would say, "I don't want to stay here." If 
men were taken to heaven just as they are by nature, with- 
out having their hearts regenerated, there would be another 
rebellion in heaven. Heaven is filled with a company of 
those that are twice born. When I was born in 1837 I 
received my old Adam nature, and when I was born again 
in 1856 I had another nature given to me. 

It is impossible to serve God aright unless you first 
make up your mind to be born again. If a house is built 
upon the sand it falls ; but if it is founded upon a rock it 
stands firm against the wind and wave. Our faith can 
never endure unless it is founded on Christ. We may 
travel through the earth and see many countries ; but 
there is one country — the land of Beulah, which John Bun- 
yan saw in vision — that country we shall never see unless 
we are born again — regenerated by Christ. We look 
abroad and see many beautiful trees, but the tree of life 
we shall never see until our eyes are made clear by faith 
in the Saviour. You may see the beautiful rivers of the 



9 6 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



earth — the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Hudson — you may- 
ride upon their bosoms, but bear in mind that your eye 
will never rest upon the river which bursts out from the 
Throne of God and flows through the upper kingdom. 
God has said it, and not man. You will never see the King- 
dom of God except you are born again. You may see the 
kings and lords of the earth, but the King of Kings and 
Lord of Lords you will never see except you are born again. 
When you are in London you may go to the Tower and 
see the crown of England, which is worth millions, and is 
guarded there by soldiers ; but bear in mind that your eye 
will never rest upon the crown of life except you are born 
again. You may come to these meetings and hear the 
songs of Zion which are sung here, but one song — that of 
Moses and the Lamb — the uncircumcised ear shall never 
hear that song unless you are born again. We may see 
the beautiful mansions of New York and the Hudson, but 
bear in mind that the mansions which Christ has gone to 
prepare you shall never see unless you are born again. It 
is God who says it. You may see ten thousand beautiful 
things in this world, but the city that Abraham caught 
sight of — and from that time he became a pilgrim and 
sojourner — you shall never see unless you are born again. 
Many of you may be invited to marriage feasts here, but 
you will never attend the marriage supper of the Lamb 
except you are born again. It is God who says it, dear 
friend. You may be looking on the face of your sainted 
mother to-night, and feel that she is praying for you, but 
the time will come when you shall never see her again 
except you are born again. I may be speaking to a young 
man or a young lady who has recently stood by the bedside 
of a dying mother, and she said to you, " Be sure and 
meet me in heaven," and you made the promise. Ah ! you 
shall never see her again except you are born again. I 
I believe Jesus of Nazareth sooner than those infidels who 



REGENERA TION. 



97 



say you do not have to be born again. If you see your 
children who have gone before, you must be born of the 
Spirit. I may be speaking to-night to a father and mother 
who have recently borne a loved one to the grave, and how 
dark your home seems ! You will never see her again 
except you are born again. If you wish to meet your 
loved ones you must be born again. 

I may be speaking to a father and mother who have a 
loved one up yonder, and if you could hear her speak, she 
would say, " Come this way." Haven't you got a sainted 
friend? Young man or young lady, haven't you got a 
mother in the world of light, and if you could hear her 
speak, wouldn't she say, " Come this way, my son," — " Come 
this way, my daughter ? " If ever you see her again you 
must be born again. Yes, we all have an elder Brother 
there. Nearly nineteen thousand years ago he crossed 
over, and from the heavenly shores He is calling you to 
heaven. Let us turn our back upon the world. Let us 
give a deaf ear to the world. Let us get our heart in the 
Kingdom of God and cry, " Life ! Life ! Eternal life ! " 
Let us pray that God may keep every soul now here from 
going out of this building to-night without being born 
again ! 

7 



"YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN." 



You who were here last night remember that I was 
speaking upon the text in the third chapter of John, " Ye 
must be born again." Now I want to call your attention to- 
night to the little word " must," in the same chapter. The 
Son of Man must be lifted up. I now come to the remedy, 
for, when it was time to close last evening, I had not an 
opportunity to take up the subject. I want, on the present 
occasion, to take up the matter where I left off ; I don't 
know but some went away disappointed by hearing the 
statement that they must be born again. They must have 
said, "I do wish he had not left off so soon; I wish he 
had gone on and told me how I must be born again." God 
helping me, I will try to tell it to you to-night, and I would 
ask, while I try to do this, that Christians would lift up 
to God their hearts in prayer, that the way be made so 
plain that every one may come into the kingdom of God. 

Let us see how God is able to save unto the utmost. I 
want you to read the 14th and 15th verses of that chapter : 
" That as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever 
believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." 
" That whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but 
have eternal life." Let me tell those who are unsaved 
within these walls to-night what God has done for you. 
He has done everything that He could do toward your 



" YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN." 99 

salvation. You need not wait for God to do anything 
more. In one place He asks the question,, what more could 
He do. He sent His prophets and they killed them, and 
then He sent His beloved Son and they murdered Him. 
And at last He has sent the Holy Ghost to convince us of 
sin and how we are to be saved. We are all sinners, and 
every man and woman knows in their hearts that they are 
sinners. Now, we come here to night to tell you the 
remedy for sin, and to tell you how you are to be saved 
from sin. Jesus came into the world to save that which 
was lost, for thou knowest there is no name given unto 
men whereby they can be saved but through the name of 
Jesus Christ our Lord. And again, " He shall be called 
Jesus, for he shall save His people from their sins." No 
sinner need die if he but put his trust in Christ. There 
is no salvation in anything else or in any other name. The 
Apostles preached no other doctrine or any other name. 
All their word was that Christ died for our sake. Take 
the second chapter of Acts, and you may read from there 
on through all the chapters, and there is hardly one but 
speaks of Christ's death and Christ crucified ; of Christ 
dying for thee ; of rising again for thee ; of ascending in- 
to Heaven for thee, and of coming again for thee. That 
is the Gospel of St. Paul and of St. Peter ; that is the 
gospel that Stephen preached when they condemned him 
to death. Paul preached that at Antioch, Corinth, and 
Ephesus. Yes, Christ crucified — that is the remedy for 
sin. We hear a great many men murmur because God 
permitted sin to come into the world. They say it is a 
great mystery. Well, I say, too, it is a great mystery. You 
may recollect how it also was a mystery to Horatius Bonar. 
He said that although it was a great mystery how sin came 
into the world, it was a greater mystery how God came to 
bear the brunt of it Himself. We could speak all the time 
about the origin of sins ; how it came into the world, but 



IO o GLAD TIDINGS. 

that is not going to help us. If I see a man tumble into 
the river and going to drown, it would do no good for me 
to sit down and bow my head and indulge in deep thought 
and reasoning how he came to get in there. The great 
question would then be how he was to be got out. Just 
look over your own life. You can prove that you are a 
sinner and have need of repentance : or if you can't do it 
to your own satisfaction there are some of your neighbors 
no doubt who can do it for you. 

And right here comes in the remedy for sin. In the 
third chapter of John we are told how men are to be saved, 
namely, by Him who was lifted up on the Cross. Just as 
Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, so 
must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever that be- 
lieveth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 
And here some men complain and say that it is very un- 
reasonable that they should be held responsible for the sin 
of a man six thousand years ago. It was not long ago 
that a man was talking to me about the injustice of being 
condemned on account of a man having sinned six thou- 
sand years ago. If there is a man here to-night who is 
going to answer in that way, I tell him it is not going to 
do him any good. If you are lost it will not be on account 
of Adam's sin. "Well," some say, "that is a strange 
statement for you to make, Mr. Moody." Well, I dare say 
you do think it strange. I wonder what some of the theo- 
logians think of it who are present here to-night. What 
do some of the ministers on this platform say to it ? I 
would like to know. Yet, let me say it again — it will not 
be on account of Adam's sin that you will be lost, if you 
are lost. " Why, Mr. Moody, that is a paradox — how do 
you explain that ? " 

Well, let me illustrate it then, and perhaps you will be 
able to understand it. Suppose I am dying with consump- 
tion, which I inherited from my father or mother. I did 



" YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN. " 101 

not get it by any fault of my own, by any neglect of my 
health ; I inherited it, let us suppose. Well, I go to my 
physician, and to the best physicians, and they all give me 
up. They say I am incurable ; I must die ; I have not 
thirty days to live. Well, a friend happens to come along 
and looks at me and says : " Moody, you have got the 
consumption." " I know it very well ; I don't want any 
one to tell me that." " But," he says, " there is a remedy 
— a remedy, I tell you. Let me have your attention. I 
want to call your attention to it. I tell you there is a 
remedy." " But, sir, I don't believe it. I have tried the 
leading physicians in this country and in Europe, and they 
tell me there is no hope." " But you know me, Moody; 
you have known me for years." " Yes, sir." " Do you 
think, then, I would tell you a falsehood ? " " No." 
" Well, ten years ago I was as far gone. I was given up 
by the physicians to die, but I took this medicine and it 
cured me. I am perfectly well — look at me." I say that 
it is a very strange case. " Yes, it may be strange, but it 
is a fact. That medicine cured me ; take this medicine 
and it will cure you. Although it has cost me a great deal, 
it shall not cost you anything. Although the salvation of 
Jesus Christ is as free as the air, it cost God the richest 
jewel of heaven. He had to give His only Son ; give all 
He had ; He had only one Son, and He gave Him. Do 
^ not make light of it, then, I beg of you." "Well," I say, 
" I would like to believe you, but this is contrary to my 
reason." Hearing this, my friend goes away and brings 
another friend to me, and he testifies to the same thing. 
He again goes away when I do not yet believe, and brings 
in another friend, and another, and another, and another, 
and they all testify to the same thing. They say they were 
as bad as myself ; that they took the same medicine that 
has been offered to me, and it cured them. He then hands 
me the medicine. I dash it to the ground ; I do not be- 



102 GLAD TIDINGS. 

lieve in its saving power ; I die. The reason is, then, that 
I spurned the remedy. So it will not be because Adam 
fell, but that you spurn the remedy offered to you to save you. 
You will have darkness rather than light. How, then, 
shall ye escape if ye neglect so great salvation ? There is 
no hope for you if you neglect the remedy. It does no 
good to look at the wound. If we are in the camp and are 
bitten by the fiery serpents, it will do no good to look at 
the wound. Looking at a wound will never save any 
one. What we must do is to look at the remedy, to look 
away to Him who hath power to save you from your sin. 
Behold the camp of the Israelites ; look at the scene 
that is pictured to your eyes. Look at New York City 
to-day. Both there in that past age, and right here in the 
present age, all — all are dying because they neglect the 
remedy that is offered. Fathers and mothers are bearing 
away their children. In that arid desert is many a short 
and little grave ; many a child has been bitten by the fiery 
serpents. Over yonder they are just burying a mother • a 
loved mother is about to be laid away. All the family, 
weeping, gather around the beloved form. You hear the 
mournful cries, you see the bitter tears. The father is 
being borne away to his last resting-place. There is 
wailing going up all over th£ camp. Tears are being shed 
for thousands who have passed away, and thousands more- 
are dying, and the plague is raging from one end of the camp 
to the other. I see in one tent an Israelitish mother bend- 
ing over the form of a beloved boy just coming into the 
bloom of life, just budding into manhood. She is wiping 
away the sweat of death that is gathering upon his brow. 
Yet a little while and his eyes are glazed, and life is ebbing 
fast away. Now, a little while and the boy is gone. His 
eyes are cast in death and her heart-strings are crushed 
and bleeding. All at once she hears a shout in the camp. 
It is a great shout about them. What does it mean ? She 



" YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN. " 103 

goes to the door of the tent. " What is the excitement in 
the camp ? " she asks those passing by, and some one says : 
" Why, my good woman, haven't you heard the good news 
that has come into the camp ? " " No," says the woman. 
" Good news ! What is it ? " " Why, han't you heard 
about it ? God has provided a remedy." " What, for the 
bitten Israelites ? Why, tell me what is the remedy." 
"Why God has instructed Moses to make a brazen serpent 
and put it on a pole in the middle of the camp, that all 
who look upon it shall not die, and the shout that you hear 
is the shout of the people when they see the serpent lifted 
up." But the mother goes back into tent, and she says : 
" My boy, I have got good news to tell you. You have 
not got to die. My boy, my boy, I have come with good 
tidings ; you can live." He is already getting stupefied ; he 
is so weak he cannot walk to the door of the tent. She 
puts her strong arms under him and lifts him up. " Look 
yonder ; it is right there under the hill." But the boy don't 
see it ; he says : " I don't see it ; where is it, mother ? " 
And she says : " Keep looking and you will see it." At 
last he catches a glimpse of the glistening serpent, and he 
is well. That is a young convert. Some men say, " O, we 
don't believe in sudden conversions." How long did it 
take to cure that boy ? How long did it take to cure those 
serpent-bitten Israelites ? It was just a look, and they 
were well. That is a young convert. I see him now call- 
ing on all those that were with him to praise God. 

He sees another young man bitten as he was, and he 
runs up to him and tells him, "You have not got to die." 
" O, no," the young man says, " that is not possible. There 
is not a physician in Israel can cure me." He doesn't 
know he has not got to die. " Why, haven't you heard 
the news ? God has provided a remedy." " What remedy ? " 
* r Why, God has told Moses to lift up a brazen serpent, 
and all that look to that serpent shall not die." I can just 



104 GLAD TIDINGS. 

see the young man. He is what you call an intellectual 
young man. He says to the young convert : " You don't 
think I am going to believe anything like that ? If the 
physicians in Israel can't cure me, you don't think that an 
old brass serpent on a pole is going to cure me ? " " Why, 
Sir, I was as bad as yourself ? " " You don't say so ? " 
" Yes, I do." " That is the most astonishing thing I ever 
heard," says the young man : " I wish you would explain 
the philosophy of it." " I can't. I only know that Hooked 
at that serpent, and I was cured : that did it. I just look- 
ed ; that is all. My mother told me the reports that were 
being heard through the camp, and I just believed what 
my mother said, and I am perfectly well." " Well, I don't 
believe you were bitten as badly as I have been." The young 
man pulls up his sleeve. " Look there ! There is where I 
was bitten, and I tell you I was worse than you are." 
" Well, if I understood the philosophy of it I would look 
and get well." " Let your philosophy go ; look and live." 
" But, Sir, you ask me to do an unreasonable thing. If 
God said, just take the brass and rub it in the bite, there 
might be something in the brass that would cure the bite. 
Young man, explain the philosophy of it." I see some 
people just before me that have talked that way since I 
have been here. But the young man calls in another and 
takes him into the tent and says : " Just tell him how the 
Lord saved you ; " and he tells just the same story, and he 
calls in others, and they all say the same thing. And so it 
is with the religion of Jesus Christ. One and another tells 
the same story, and by and by all God's people tell in one 
way how they are saved — Jesus of Nazareth, no other name, 
no other way. If ail nations could talk one language, they 
would only tell one story, only name one name, one remedy. 
The young man says it is a very strange thing ; " if the 
Lord had told Moses to go and get some herbs and some 
plants and roots and boil them and take the medicine, 



YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN. 



x °5 



there is something in that. It is so contrary to my nature 
to do such a thing as to look at the serpent, that I can't do 
it." " You can do it." At last the mother has been off out 
in the camp, and she says, " My boy, I have got just the 
best news in the world for you. I went out in the camp, 
and I saw hundreds very far gone, and they are all perfectly 
well now." The young man says : " I would like to get 
well ; it is a very painful thought to die ; I want to go into 
the promised land, and it is terrible to die here in this 
wilderness ; but the fact is I don't understand it. It don't 
appeal to my reason. I can't believe that I*can get well 
in a moment," and the young man dies in his own un- 
belief. 

Whose fault ? Whose fault is it, the unbelief here ? 
Whose fault is it ? God provided a remedy for this bitten 
Israelite — " look and live ! " And there is eternal life for 
every poor bitten Israelite here. Look, and you can be 
saved, my friends, this very night. God has provided a 
remedy, and it is offered to all. The trouble is, a great 
many people are looking at the pole. Don't look at the 
pole ; that don't do any good ; that is the church. You 
need not look at the church ; the church is all right, 
but the church can't save you. Look beyond the 
pole. Look at the Crucified one. Look at Calvary 
Bear in mind, sinner, that He died for all. Look 
in time, and be you saved if there is none else. If 
Christ opened the way, it is the way. What other name 
is there given whereby we can be saved ? We don't want 
to look at Moses, Moses is all right in his place, but Moses 
can't save you. You need not look at these ministers ; 
they are just God's chosen instruments to hold up the ser- 
pent, to hold up the remedy, to hold up Christ. And so 
my friends take your eyes off from men. Take your eyes 
off from the church, but lift them up to Jesus, who took 
away the sins of the world, and there will be life from 



io 6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

this hour. Thank God, we don't need an education to 
know how to look. That little girl who can't read ; that 
little boy four years old, who can't read, can look. That 
little boy, when the father is coming home, the mother 
says, " Look ! look ! look ! " and the little child learns to 
look long before he is a year old, and that is the way to be 
saved. It is look at the Lamb of God that taketh away 
the sins of the world, and there is life to-night and this 
moment for every man that is willing to look. Not look 
at the Church, not look at yourselves, but look at Christ. 
Some people say, "There is a man; what faith he has 
got ; I wish I had his faith." You might as well say, " I 
wish I had his eyes." You don't need his faith ; what you 
need is his Christ. You need not be wishing for his eyes. 
You have got eyes of your own. 

Some men say, " I wish I knew just how to be saved." 
Just take God at His word and trust His Son this very night 
and this very hour and this very moment. He will save you 
if you will trust Him. I imagine I hear some one saying 
" I don't feel the bite as much as I wish I could. I know 
I'm a sinner and all that, but I don't feel the bite enough." 
How much do you want to feel it ? How much does God 
want you to feel it ? When I was in Belfast I knew a doc- 
tor who had a friend, a leading surgeon there, and he 
told me that the surgeon's custom was, before performing 
any operation, to say to the patient, " Take a good look 
at the wound, and then fix your eyes on me and don't take 
them off till I get through." I thought at the time that 
was a good illustration. Sinner, take a good look at the 
wound to-night, and then fix your eyes on Christ, and don't 
take them off. It is better to look at the remedy than at the 
wound. See what a poor wretched sinner you are, and 
then look at the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of 
the world. He died for the ungodly and the sinner. Say 
" I'll take him," and may God help you to lift your eye to 



" YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN" IO y 

the man on Calvary, and as the Israelites looked upon the 
serpent and were healed, so may you look and live to- 
night. 

After the battle of Pittsburgh Landing and Murfrees- 
boro' I was in a hospital at Murfreesboro.' And one night 
after midnight, I was woke up and told that there was a 
man in one of the wards who wanted to see me. I went 
to him and he called me " chaplain " — I wasn't a chaplain 
— and he said he wanted me to help him die. And I said 
" I'd take you right up in my arms and carry you into the 
kingdom of God if I could ; but I can't do it ; I can't help 
you to die." And he said, " Who can ? " I said ? " The Lord 
Jesus Christ can — He came for that purpose." He shook 
his head and said, " He can't save me ; I have sinned all 
my life." And I said, " But He came to save sinners." I 
thought of his mother in the North, and I knew that she 
was anxious that he should die right, and I thought I'd 
stay with him. I prayed two or three times, and re- 
peated all the promises I could, and I knew that in a few 
hours he would be gone. I said I wanted to read him a 
conversation that Christ had with a man who was anxious 
about his soul. I turned to the third chapter of John. His 
eyes were riveted on me, and when I came to the 14th and 
15th verses — my text to-night — he caught up the words, 
" As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so 
must the Son of Man be lifted up ; that whosoever believ- 
eth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." He 
stopped me and said, " Is that there ? " I said " Yes," and 
he asked me to read it again, and I did so. He leaned his 
elbows on the cot and clasped his hands together and said, 
" That's good ; won't you read it again ? " I read it the 
third time, and then went on with the rest of the chapter. 
When I -finished his eyes were closed, his hands were folded, 
and there was a smile on his face. O ! how it was lit up ! 
What a change had come over it ! I saw his lips quiver- 



108 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ing, and I leaned over him and heard, in a faint whisper, 
" As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must 
the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on 
Him should not perish, but have eternal life." He opened 
his eyes and said, " That's enough ; don't read any more." 
He lingered a few hours and then pillowed his head on 
those two verses, and then went up in one of Christ's char- 
iots and took his seat in the Kingdom of God. You may 
spurn God's remedy and perish ; but I tell you God don't 
want you to perish. He says, " As I live I have no 
pleasure in the death of the wicked." " Turn ye, turn ye, 
for why will ye die ! " May God help you all to look unto 
Him and be saved. 






GOD IS LOVE. 



I want to take for our subject to-night what Christ is to 
us, and when I get through, and any one of our friends 
says he is not convinced, it will not be because you don't 
want to be convinced, and will not have Him. He will 
be all that I make Him out to be, and a thousand times 
more. No man living could tell about His great love and 
great necessity to us in an hour ; nay, he could not tell it in 
24 hours. It is beyond time and Beyond expression to tell 
what Christ is to us — that is, if He has believed on Him 
and been redeemed by Him. I remember speaking upon 
this subject some time ago in Europe, and when I got 
through and was going home, I said to a Scotch friend of 
mine who was in my company that I was very much dis- 
appointed ; that I did not get through with the subject. 
He looked at me in astonishment and said, " My friend, 
what ! did ye expect to tell what Christ is in half an hour ? 
Ye need never expect to tell it in all eternity ; ye would 
never get through with it." I have thought of it often 
since. Take eternity ! Yes, I know it would. 

Well, right here 1 want to ask you whether Christ is 
worth having ? I imagine some of you will say that that is 
a strange question — a man to get up and ask that. Well, 
perhaps it is, but it does seem to me that a great many men 
do think that Christ is not worth having. If they did 
really want Him let them take Him. He was God's 



IIO GLAD TIDINGS. 

greatest gift to the world. He is there for you and for me 
to partake of. Just let me ask that question again, Do you 
think that the Son of God is worth having ? Oh, that God 
may open the eyes of every lost soul here to-night to see 
Christ here right in the midst of them. Oh, that you may 
worship Him in spirit and in truth, view Him as the chief 
among thousands, the One altogether lovely.' Christ wants 
to be a Saviour to every one of us. In the second chap- 
ter of Luke and the tenth verse we read that a Saviour has 
been given us : " Behold, I bring you good tidings of great 
joy, which shall be to all people ; for unto you is born this 
day, in the City of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the 
Lord." And if we know He is our Lord and truth and 
wisdom and life, we must first know Him as our Saviour. 
You must first meet Him at Calvary — first see Him on the 
cross. There is no life in us except we come to Calvary — 
no life until we come to that mountain. Now, I don't want 
you to think I mean to ask you to trust in the form. Many, 
yea thousands, make that great mistake. We are not taking 
Him as a personal Saviour ; we don't try to know Him as 
our own. That is a great mistake, and it is a common 
mistake. During the last few years I was not occupied 
with the person of Christ ; it was more about the doctrine 
and about the form. But lately Christ is more to me per- 
sonally. And it would be a great help to you to cultivate 
His acquaintance personally, and come to Him. as the per- 
sonal Saviour, and be able to take Him and look up to Him 
and say, " He is my Saviour." I don't know how many times 
I have heard men say during the past few weeks, " I would 
come to Him and love Him, but I don't think I could hold 
out." But I tell you, he is not only a Saviour but a Deliverer. 
He can deliver us from the power of sin. He can deliver 
us from Satan. There is not a guilt, crime, trouble or trial 
but that if we go to the Son of God He is able to deliver 
us from it. 



GOD IS LOVE. in 

Bear in mind that we are the lawful captives of sin. If 
a man has committed a sin, Satan has a power over him 
and a claim upon him . and holds him as his lawful prey. 
But saith the Lord, " Even the captives of the mighty shall 
be taken away." And He saith further that He will con- 
tend for thee and take thee from those that hold thee cap- 
tive. Thanks be to God, we can go to Him with confidence, 
and have Him deliver us from the power of our besetting sin. 
If there be a man here who is the slave of strong drink, 
I bring him good news ! God is able to deliver you from 
that which has gained the mastery over you. If there be a 
man here who is the slave of any passion, or any lust, I say 
unto him that the Son of God came into the world to 
destroy the works of the devil and deliver you from the 
power of Satan ; and he wants to deliver not only you, but 
to deliver every soul, and you can, if you will, be saved this 
very minute. When He led the children of Israel out from 
Egypt and through the Red Sea, He saved them at once. 
So can every one be saved, no matter what church he be- 
longs to, whether he belongs to the true Apostolic church 
or to any other church. The Son of God can save in any 
church or in any denomination. Here is Dr. Tyng sit- 
ting here, and Dr. Armitage and Dr. Hall, and I ask them 
whether they do not believe that Dr. Tyng will say that his 
is the true Apostolic Church, and Dr. Armitage will say 
his is, and Dr. Hall will say his is, and the Methodists 
say that John Wesley is the greatest man since Christ. 
But you can be saved in any church if you follow 
Him. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." The 
Son of God will be in the right church ; He makes no 
mistake. He never leads His people into a wrong path. 
Christ is the way. He said unto Peter "follow Me," and 
Peter did follow Him and found everlasting life. Who 
can lead people through the wilderness but the Lord Al- 
mighty ? He created the wilderness, and he knows it bet- 



II2 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ter than anyone else. He will take care that none of His 
children are lost. He will put before them the pillar of 
fire, and the cloud to shield them from the sun. 

No man that follows in the footsteps of Christ can be 
in the wrong way. Christ says, " I am the way." Yes, 
but some people say that is the old way ; I want some- 
thing new. But I say unto you that the old way is the 
best and the only way. The way, young man, that your 
sainted mother trod, is the right way. Don't you go in 
any other way. When men who don't believe in Christ 
come and say they have found a new way, don't believe 
them. Don't believe these infidels. They want to take 
the Bible from you. But what do they intend to give you 
in its place ? They call to you to give up your Bible, but 
what can they do for you without that ? They might offer 
.you "Paine's Age of Reason!" What a book to put in 
the place of our beloved Bible ! Why, even the infidels 
would not have it themselves. What consolation, what 
comfort, what joy, could be got from such a book as they 
would give to you ? What pain would it assuage, what 
comfort would it bring to you ? They say " We have 
grown wiser than the Bible, now ; it is an old worn-out 
Book." Why on the same principle they might complain 
of the sun, and yet what would they put in the place of its 
warmth, its genial influence, its life-giving power. Let 
them give up the sun, then, and try to supply the world 
with gas-light. The sun is thousands of years old, but gas 
is new : use gas then in place of the sun. Strike out all 
the windows of your houses, and have nothing to do with 
it. You might as well do that as give up the Bible. Out- 
grown it ! Why, there is no book to be compared with it. 
No other book will lift up the world. Try and bring up 
your children without the Bible and see what they will 
come to. Go into a town and try to live without that good 
book. You would flee from it as they who left Sodom and 



GOD IS LOVE. 



"3 



Gomorrah. Have the infidels ever produced a Knox, 
Bunyan, or Milton ? When a man goes into the wilderness 
to hunt, he takes a hatchet with him and cuts the bark off 
the trees — they call it "blazing" — and thus he can find 
his way out. So God has blazed the way along ; He has 
gone up on high and He says, " Follow Me." Just come 
now and follow the Son of God, for there is life there. 

But this means something more than that. He is the 
light upon our way. Now, I hear so many people com- 
plaining about the darkness, but there is no darkness in 
following Christ. I have seen a picture lately that I don't 
enjoy a great deal. It represents Christ knocking at the 
door with a lantern. What does the Son of God want of a 
lantern ? Christ says, " I am the light of the world ; " He 
doesn't need any lantern. Did you ever find a man or 
woman anywhere in Christendom that was following the 
Son of God that was in darkness ? Did you ever, Dr. 
Armitage ? Did you, Dr. Hall ? Not only that — you never 
will. A man who is following Christ can't help but be in 
light, because He is the light of the world. Yes, and it 
carries us beyond the grave and beyond the judgment- 
We don't fear death. It can't be very dark, because 
Christ is there, and He will be in the way. Haven't you 
been at the bedside of a dying saint, and haven't you seen 
the light that streamed in there, and you thought you was 
just at the very portals of Heaven ? Do you know why it 
was light there ? Why the curtain was lifted, and like 
Stephen they could look into the Celestial City ? 

A great many people are looking for peace and are 
looking for joy, and they hear this minister and that minis- 
ter and this person and that person speak about peace and 
joy. You just follow Christ and it will come of itself. 
When I was a little boy I used to try to catch my shadow, but 
I always failed. Many a time I might try to see if I could 
jump over my head ; many a time I tried to see if I could 

8 



H4 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



not outrun it, but it always kept ahead of me. But I turned 
around and faced the sun, and, lo and behold, my shadow 
was coming after me. And so we want to look toward 
Christ, and peace and joy and happiness will come in turn. 
We don't want to turn our backs to the light, but keep our 
eyes upon Christ. Look unto Jesus, the author and fin- 
isher of our faith ; not look to see what neighbor Jones is 
doing, to see if we ain't better than he is. We will never 
get much peace in that way. What is the standard ? Look 
up. Look up to-night because there is darkness around 
us. We are not to look around us, but we are to keep 
looking up. Christ is the light of the world, and you 
know the world refused to have the light ; they put it out. 
they took Him to Calvary and they put Him to death. Just 
before they put Him out He says, " Ye are the light of the 
world." What Christ has left us down here for is to shine. 
We are not put here to make money, but that we may shine 
out like Daniel in Babylon, and if man will let his light 
shine — it don't say make it shine — the light will shine out 
of our countenance, and the world will see there is a living 
reality in the religion of Jesus Christ. 

I remember in the darkest hours in the history of our 
country, when it looked as if everything was going to 
pieces, I remember attending a prayer-meeting one Sunday 
night, and every one that spoke spoke on the dark side, 
and an old man, the light shining out of his eyes, and his 
beautiful white hair falling over his shoulders, said, " You 
don't talk like true sons of the King. It is all light up 
around the throne. If an unconverted man should come 
in here and listen to you he certainly wouldn't want to be- 
come a Christian." He said he had just come from the 
East, and he had heard one of his friends talk about a 
beautiful sunrise, and he made arrangements with the land- 
lord to take him up on the summit to see the sunrise. So 
in the morning the guide aroused him and they started out. 



GOD IS LOVE. 115 

The guide went ahead and he followed. He said they 
had not been gone a great while when there came a ter- 
rible thunder storm, and the old man said to the guide, 
" It will be no use to go up ; we can't see the sun 
rise ; the storm is fearful." " O, sir, " said the guide " I 
think we will get above the storm." They could see the 
lightning playing about them, and the great old mountain 
shook with the thunder, and it was very dark ; but when 
they got up above the clouds ail was light and clear. So if 
it is dark here, rise higher ; it is light enough up around the 
throne. If I may rise up to the light, I have no business 
to be in darkness. Rise higher, higher, higher. It is the 
privilege of the child of God to walk on unclouded. Sinner, 
look up from this night and this hour. Now I don't know 
but there may be some infidel, some skeptic here. I 
heard of an infidel once who said, " Look at your con- 
vert ; it is all moonshine." The young convert replied to 
him, " I thank you for the compliment. We are perfectly 
- willing to be called that. The moon borrows the light 
from the sun, and so we borrow ours from Christ." And so 
bear in your minds, my friends, that we borrow our light 
from Christ. 

In the i2istPsalm it is written, " Behold Hethatkeep- 
eth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is 
thy keeper." If he is our keeper, can anything hurt us ? 
Keep this in your hearts, that Christ is able to save you ; 
He is not only able to light you upon the way, but He is able 
to keep you from this night and from this hour, until He 
presents you before the throne without spot and without 
blemish. Don't tell me He doesn't have the power to keep 
you. He has. That is what Christ came into the world 
for, to keep sinners. Some men have an idea when they 
get converted that they have got to keep Christ and them- 
selves too. It is all wrong. I remember one time my little 
girl was teasing her mother to get her a muff, and so one 



n6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

day her mother brought a muff home, and, although it was 
storming, she very naturally wanted to go out in order to 
try her new muff. So she tried to get me to go out with 
her. I went out with her, and I said, " Emma, better let 
me take your hand." She wanted to keep her hands in her 
muff, and so she refused to take my hand. Well, by and 
by she came to an icy place, her little feet slipped, and down 
she went. When T helped her up she said, " Papa, you 
may give me your little ringer." " No, my daughter, just 
take my hand." " No, no, papa, give me your little finger." 
Well, I gave my finger to her, and for a little way she got 
along nicely, but pretty soon we came to another icy place, 
and again she fell. This time she hurt herself a little, and 
she said : li Papa, give me your hand," and I gave her my 
hand, and closed my fingers about her wrist, and held her 
up so that she could not fall. Just so God is our keeper. 
He is wiser than we. Run to your Elder Brother for aid. 
Is there a man here to whom a saloon is a temptation ? 
Who can't go by a saloon without wanting to go in ? Just 
let him throw himself upon the Lord. Say, " Lord Jesus, 
keep me." 

There are thousands and millions around the throne 
of God to-night. Yes, God gave them grace, and overcame 
all things for them. Thank God, oh ! thank God for that. 
When I was in England I had a great curiosity to visit the 
Zoological Gardens, because of a story I heard concerning 
them. There was a man who had a little dog which he 
had trained to run. So one day he made a bet about his 
dog's running, but when the time came for the race the little 
dog wouldn't run at all and the man lost all his money. 
This so enraged the man that he beat the dog terribly, and 
at last he tucked him into the lion's cage. He thought 
the lion would make quick work of him, but the lion lapped 
the dog and made a pet of him, so at last the man wanted 
to get his dog back, and he called to him, and tried by every 



GOD IS LOVE. 117 

means to make the little dog come out of the cage, but he 
wouldn't come. So the man went and told a man about it, 
and the man told the keeper, and when the keeper came, 
the man said to him, " That's my dog in the cage there, 
and I want you to get him out for me." Then the keeper 
said, " How came the dog there ? " And the man had to tell, 
and the keeper said, " If you want your dog you can take 
him out of the cage." He could not take him out, and there 
he stayed for twenty years. The only safety is to keep close 
to Christ. The lion of the tribe of Judah conquered the 
lion of hell. Keep close to Christ. None shall pluck 
you out of His hand. It's no delusion ! It has kept me 
for twenty years. If it's a delusion, it's a precious de- 
lusion. 

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." Ah ! 
what a shepherd. The shepherd takes care of the sheep. 
Did you ever hear of the sheep taking care of the shep- 
herd ! Strive to get into the fold. The Lord is my shep- 
herd. Oh ! what a good shepherd. But I want to speak 
of another thing that the Lord is. He is a burden-bearer. 
I will not speak of His wisdom, righteousness, strength, 
power. It would take all eternity to tell all about God, but 
I will speak of Him as a bearer of burdens. There is not 
a poor, sin-weary mortal that may not at once cast his bur- 
den upon Christ. Cast all your burden upon the Lord. 
People sometimes pray to have their burdens taken from 
them, and then they will rise up and take their burdens on 
their shoulders and go away unrelieved. I like to think of 
Christ as the burden-bearer. A minister was moving his 
library up-stairs. His little boy wanted to help him, so he 
gave him the biggest book he could find, and the little fel- 
low tugged at it till he got it about half way up, and then 
he sat down and cried. His father found him, and just 
took him in his arms, big book and all, and carried him up 
stairs. So Christ will carry you and all your burdens. 



CHRIST'S MISSION TO THE WORLD. 



You will find my text this evening in the 19th chapter of 
the Gospel according to St. Luke, and part of the 10th 
verse : " For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that 
which was lost." In this little short verse the whole 
mission of Christ is told. He came for a purpose, He 
came to do a work, and we get the information of what He 
came to do in this verse — he came to save sinners — to save 
the lost. If you will look in your Bibles carefully you will 
find that every man that got sent before Christ had a work 
to do, and he always succeeded, and do you think that God 
will send His Son to do work on earth and not give Him 
power and strength to do that work ? He sent His Son 
here to save sinners, and He did give Him the power to 
accomplish that work. Do you think that Christ, who 
voluntarily came into the world to save sinners, is not 
willing to receive all that come to Him — not willing to save 
them ? Now let us take up this verse and look at it on 
every side, and look around it, and see how it was that He 
uttered these words. In the last part of the 18th chapter, 
that I read this evening, we find Christ coming near to the 
City of Jericho. A man who had come down to Jerusalem 
had met a poor blind beggar sitting by the wayside. The 
beggar had probably asked him for something — some 
money. But the stranger said to him, " I have got some- 
thing more precious than silver or gold ; you may get 
back your sight." " Oh," says Bartimeus, " that cannot 






CHRIST'S MISSION TO THE WORLD. IZ g 

be ; there is no chance for me. I have not got eye-balls, 
even. I was born blind ; never saw the mother that gave 
me birth ; never saw the wife that leaned on my breast ; 
never saw my offspring ; never saw my friends or neighbors 
or the light of Heaven." " But," says the stranger, " it 
is yet true ; for I have come down from Jerusalem, and I 
saw there a man who had been born blind, just as bad as 
you are now, and he received his sight." " Received his 
sight ! " said the beggar, " oh, tell me how it was ; tell 
me all about it." And the man went on and told him how 
Christ had given the man sight. He told him that he had 
seen Christ stoop down on the earth, spit upon it and make 
some mud of the clay, and put the mixture on the eyes of the 
man, and, behold ! the man received his sight. Why, if a 
man has the best eyes in the world — to make a mixture 
like that and put it in his eyes ! But God's ways are not 
like our ways. He does not work as we think He would 
work. But the man went on and assured Bartimeus that 
the man after this operation had actually received as good 
sight as he ever had. And the man proceeded, and 
further told the beggar that he had something more to say, 
and that was it did not cost the man anything. Oh, what 
a physician that was ! We never had such a physician, 
and never will have. Just think that a man restores your 
sight and never charges you anything for it ! It was never 
heard of before that a man should receive this great bless- 
ing and not receive it without paying money or doing any- 
thing to secure this great mercy. You have not got to 
send a deputation to this great Prophet, to give him money, 
or to use influence with Him, or to plead with Him. All 
you have to do is to ask Him, and you will get your peti- 
tion. After this information, which Bartimeus received 
with the greatest astonishment, he replied, " Oh, if He 
only comes this way, I will ask Him, and I will present my 
petition to Him." 



120 GLAD TIDINGS. 

And so it is, my Christian friends, with Christ to-day. 
Ask Him what you want, and you have God's own word 
that ye shall receive it. Did you ever see a man that went 
to God and asked Him properly, and for a proper thing, 
that he didn't get it ? Ask the Lord always, and He is 
always ready to give. And I can imagine the joy with 
which Bartimeus received these glad tidings. In what a 
forlorn and desperate condition had Bartimeus been ! You 
can see him being led out by one of his children along the 
streets from day to day, or by a faithful dog, to ask alms 
from his fellows as they passed by. " Give," he would say, 
" a poor blind beggar a farthing ; I have been blind these 
many years ; I am destitute ; help me." He had sat in 
the same place before, and he received his usual pittance. 
But now there is going to happen a great thing. He is in 
his accustomed place ; he hears the footsteps of a crowd 
approaching, and he asks, " What does it mean ? Who is 
that coming ? " And they tell him that it is Jesus of 
Nazareth who is passing by. I can imagine the thrill that 
pervades the poor man. Here is Jesus of whom he has 
heard ; here is his great chance, his golden opportunity. 
This is his time, and he cries out with a loud voice, 
" Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me." 

Perhaps it was Peter that turned round upon him and 
told him to hush. He thought that Jesus was going to 
be crowned King of the Jews as soon as he reached the 
city, and he did not think it became any one to disturb 
him. Or, perhaps, it was John who did not understand 
the cry. But he -still kept on — they told him to be still in 
vain — " Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy upon me ! " 
And our Lord looked that way ; He never hears a man cry 
unto Him in vain. And Jesus stopped and commanded 
the man to be brought unto Him. I can just picture that 
scene when they came running up to the poor blind man. 
" The man has sent for you," they say. Yes, God never 



CHRIST'S MISSION TO THE WORLD. i 2 j 

sends for any one yet, but that He has a blessing in store 
for him. They take him by the hand and lead him to 
Jesus. The Lord asked what could He do for him, and 
Bartimeus replied, " Lord, that I may receive my sight." 
And the heart of the Son of God was moved with compas- 
sion, and He said to him that he should receive his sight, 
and immediately the man saw, and the first object he saw 
on getting the light was the Son of God Himself. Then 
he goes among the crowd, and no one shouts louder than 
Bartimeus. He shouts glory to God in the highest, and he 
presses on after Christ on his way to the city. You can all 
take in the joy of that moment that had arrived to this poor 
man. When he gets to the city he leaves the crowd, and 
says he will just step around and see his wife. He had 
never seen her before, and wanted to find out what sort of 
a wife he had. He also wanted to see his children. Well, 
as he goes on his way a man meets him and looks at him 
in astonishment. " What, who is this ? Is your name 
Bartimeus?" " Yes," says Bartimeus, " it is I." "Why," 
says his fellow-citizen, " how's this ? I thought you were 
blind." " Yes," says Bartimeus, " I was blind, but I just 
met Jesus outside .the city, and He has given me my 
sight." 

Another man also heard of Jesus, and another convert 
was made — Zaccheus. And just here I want to put this 
picture before the minds of those who don't believe in sud- 
den conversions. This Zaccheus had gone up among the 
branches and the leaves of a sycamore tree, but as Jesus 
passed under He saw the man, and said at once to him, 
" Zaccheus, come down," and the eye and the voice of the 
Son of God flashed life into the soul of Zaccheus. He told 
Zaccheus that that was the last time he should pass that 
way ; and, sinner, when God calls upon you it may be the 
last time you will ever hear His voice. But Zaccheus heard 
the voice and obeyed it, and he was not scared into obey- 



122 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ing it either. Some persons at the present day would 
rather be scared into the Kingdom of Heaven than any- 
other way. But that is not the way that Jesus did. 

Some of these professed Christians talk against sudden 
conversions ; but how long did it take the Lord to convert 
Zaccheus ? He must have been converted getting down. 
It was right in the air, between the branches and the 
ground. You see those people who say, " I don't believe 
these are genuine conversions." Ah, I wish we could 
have a few more conversions like Zaccheus. Zaccheus 
gave one-half of his goods to the poor. Do you think you 
could make a poor man in Jericho believe that conversion 
not genuine ? If we could have a few more conversions 
like that here, do you think you could make the poor 
people in New York believe that that conversion wasn't 
genuine ? I don't believe there was a poor man in Jericho 
that didn't believe in Zaccheus's conversion. Yes, why 
can't we have some Zaccheus converted in New York City ? 
I tell you if men are converted like Zaccheus the people 
wouldn't be talking against conversions then. Zaccheus 
gave half his goods to the poor. Zaccheus did more than 
that ; he said, " If I have taken anything from any man 
falsely I will restore him four-fold." It made a great stir 
in Jericho. The people said, " There is a true disciple." It 
was like a flashing meteor ; and how sudden it was. You 
must remember one thing ; if you don't give half your 
goods to the poor, you must make restitution. If you have 
lied about a man, if you have slandered a man, if you have 
abused a man, go and tell him that you have done him an 
injustice ; go and make a restitution. I felt much encour- 
aged last night ; a man came into the inquiry room and said 
" Mr. Moody, I want you to forgive me." " Why," said I, 
" I have got nothing to forgive you for ; I never met you 
before." " Well," said the man, " I have been abusing 
you for about a year. I was here last night and I got con- 



CHRIST'S MISSION TO THE WORLD. 



123 



verted, and I want to ask your forgiveness." He had been 
abusing me and slandering me, and had been talking about 
something he didn't know anything about. There was a 
man in Brooklyn who said about restitution : " There is a 
shoemaker's bill I have been owing, and I have owed it 
for nine years." So he went around the next day and paid 
it. The shoemaker said, "Well, I believe in those kind of 
meetings now." He didn't believe in them before. What 
we want is to have men become disciples of Jesus Christ. 
I may be speaking to some clerk to-night who has taken 
money from his employer falsely. It may be that he has 
covered up his track, and no one knows it but the all- 
seeing eye' of God. But you can't look up, and you can't 
have the sympathies of God, and you can't be converted 
unless you make restitution. It may be that you have 
squandered the money, and can't make restitution ; but go 
right to that man you have injured and confess it. There 
was a man who had robbed his employer of $500, and the 
spirit of God aroused him and he went to one of our min- 
isters and told the story. He wanted to become a Christian, 
but there was the $500 right in his mind all the while." 
"Well," said the minister, " your path is very clear; 
you must pay back the money." " But," said the man, " I 
can't pay it back." "Then," said the minister, " you must 
go back to your employer, and confess it." But the man 
said, " My employer is a hard-hearted man, and if I con- 
fess it he will put me in prison." And the man couldn't 
do it, he thought. " Well," said the minister, " I will go 
and see your employer." And he went into the office of 
the man and told the story. " Now," said the minister, "I 
have reason to believe that that man has been converted of 
his sin. I believe if you will forgive it, and if you give him 
a chance, you may save the soul of the man, and he will 
work and pay back the money." The man said, " He shall 
never hear a word from me," and the result is that the 



I24 GLAD TIDINGS. 

clerk has now become a joyful Christian. And so if you 
want to become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ you 
must make restitution. Zaccheus made restitution. He 
went into his office and made out a check for neighbor so 
and so, and for neighbor so and so, for $100, and then 
sent his clerk around and offered and urged these different 
men to take this money ; and do you think these men that 
had been robbed thought his conversion wasn't genuine ? 
He paid back not only what he had taken, but he restored 
them four-fold. Do you think those men didn't have con- 
fidence in Zaccheus. There wasn't a man in all Jericho that 
didn't believe in his conversion. I can imagine a man 
saying, " Your master didn't owe me anything." But the 
clerk answers, " My master told me to tell you he had taxed 
you too much." What a smile came over his face. " What 
has come over this man ? There was a time when he was 
unreasonable. He is giving money to the poor, and he is 
making restitution ; that is a genuine conversion ! " That 
is an evidence of a man who had the Son of God. That 
is an evidence of the Son of God breathing life into a man's 
soul. 

If we could only get the confession of a man that he is 
lost, it wouldn't be long before he would be saved. If a 
man ain't lost why has he need of a Saviour? But, oh, how 
refreshing it is to find one who will admit that he is lost. 
If you will admit that you are a sinner, I can tell you there's 
One mighty to save — One who came to save sinners. I 
was invited to preach in the Tombs a few years ago. I 
supposed there was a chapel, as there are in most of our 
prisons, in which the prisoners would be gathered for me 
to talk to them. But I found they were in their cells, and 
I had to speak to them there. There were two tiers of 
cells above me, one below and one on a level with me. 
There were three or four hundred prisoners, but I couldn't 
see a face • it seemed as if I was talking to a wall or to the air. 



CHRIST'S MISSION TO THE WORLD. I2 $ 

And when I got through I thought I'd like to see who and 
what I had been talking to. When I looked in the first 
cell, I saw the prisoners playing cards, and I said, " How is 
it with you ? " And they hesitated, and then said there 
had been false witnesses in the case, and they ought not to 
be there. In the second cell, when I spoke to them they 
said, " Well, we'll tell you, Chaplain, we got into bad com- 
pany, and those that were with us got away and we got 
caught. We hadn't done anything wrong." And the 
prisoner in the next cell had an excuse : " The man that did 
it looked just like me, but they took me for him although I 
am innocent." And in the next cell they hadn't had their 
trial yet, but by next Sunday they would be out. So I 
went from cell to cell, and I never found so many innocent 
men in one day in my life. The only guilty ones, they 
said, were the officers who put them there. So you say to- 
night, " I'm not lost, but the man in the seat next behind me 
is." You are drawing the rags of self-righteousness around 
you, and think you are not bad. But God says, " He that 
breaks the least of these commandments is guilty of all." 
If you were taken away what would become of your soul ? 
Every soul that is not born of God shall be lost for time 
and eternity. Don't let the infidels make you believe you 
are all right. Well, I went on through the cells, and at 
last in one I saw a man sitting with his head resting on 
his hands, and I could see tears falling from his eyes. 
How refreshing it was to see that. I asked him what his 
trouble was. He said, " My sins are greater than I can 
bear." And I said, " Thank God for that ! " And he says, 
" Thank God for that ? Ain't you the man's that's been 
preaching to us ? " " Yes," I said ; " I'm your friend, and 
I am glad you feel your sins." "Well," he says, "you are 
a queer friend." And I said, " If your sins are more than 
you can bear you can cast them on One who is able to bear 
them. I've been hunting for you a long time." " What? " 



126 GLAD TIDINGS. 

he says, " hunting for me ! " And I said. " You are lost, 
and I am glad I have found one man who will admit that 
he is lost." And I preached Christ to him. I told him of 
Him who came to seek and save the lost, who came to 
open the prison doors and set the captive free, who gives 
life and light and peace and joy. I must have talked to 
him for half an hour, and then I said I would pray with 
him. So we knelt down, I on the outside and he on the 
inside. And after I had prayed I said, " Now you pray." 
And he said it would be blasphemy for him to pray. But 
I told him that the blood of Jesus Christ cleansed from all 
sin, and he bowed his head down to the floor, and could 
only say, without so much as lifting his eyes toward heaven, 
" God be merciful to me, a poor, miserable wretch." No 
man sends up such a cry that God doesn't hear him. And 
I put my hand through the little window and I felt a tear 
drop on it ; and I said, " I'll be praying for you to-night be- 
tween 9 and 10 o'clock at the hotel, and I want you to meet 
me at the Throne of Grace." That night it seemed as if 
the Spirit of God came upon me. I went to see him next 
morning, and the moment my eyes rested on him I saw a 
great change. Remorse and despair were gone, and the 
light from yon world had come upon him. He seemed to 
me to be the happiest man in New York. -He said, " I 
thought I could never bear to see my old friends, but God 
came and set my soul free. I think it was about midnight. 
I cried and He heard me, and I am happy." 

Do you see why Christ came to that one captive ? It 
was because he took his place among lost sinners. O, 
sinner, cry " Thou Son of David have mercy upon me." 
Take your place among the lost. Let the cry go up from 
every soul, "Be merciful to me a sinner." Don't you 
want to be saved ? Won't all the Christians unite in the 
prayer that God would save every lost soul. I want to 
say a word to the lost — and I mean all the sinners who 



CHRIST'S MISSION TO THE WORLD. 127 

have not been converted. While the Christians pray, close 
your eyes and lift up your hearts to God and ask Him to 
have mercy. These are solemn days. I never felt more 
power than in the meeting last night. God is near us, and 
His Spirit is here to-night. He is answering the prayers 
of the Christians of New York. I believe the answer is 
come, and God is moving mightily in this city. Young 
men and young women, don't laugh at your praying friends, 
who are anxious for your soul. If you have friends who 
pray and weep for you treat them kindly. They are 
worth more to you than is the world. Go home and tell 
your anxious mother that you are saved, and make her 
heart glad that her God has become yours. 



CHRIST CAME TO SEEK AND SAVE. 



You that were here last night will remember that I 
preached from the 19th chapter of Luke, the 10th verse : 
" For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which 
was lost." I did not get through with that text last night. 
I don't know that I ever will as long as I am on earth. I 
want to speak to-night from the same text, and I want to 
ask the audience to ask themselves this question — I would 
like to have every one of you ask yourselves the question, 
" Am I saved, or am I lost ? " For certainly you must be 
either saved or lost. Now I am not asking you if you be- 
long to some church, or if you read your Bible, or if you 
pray, but are you saved ? It strikes me that it is a ques- 
tion that ought to interest every one, and every one here 
ought to be able to answer the question. Present salvation 
is the only salvation worth having. The idea that you may 
be saved at some future time is not worth having, because 
we may be disciplined ; we may be taken away with a 
stroke ; we may be ushered into eternity before to-morrow 
morning, and what we want is present salvation, and to be 
able to say that " I am saved." There are some people 
who say that it is presumption for a man to say that he is 
saved. It is great presumption for a man not to say that, 
if he has reason to believe that he is saved. Job says, " I 
know that my Redeemer liveth." John says : " We know 
that we have passed from death unto life, because we love 






CHRIST CAME TO SEEK AND SAVE. I2 g 

the brethren." Peter says : " Christ, according to His 
abundant mercy, hath begotten us again to an inheritance, 
incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, re- 
served in heaven for you who are kept by the power of 
God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in 
the last time." There is a salutary touch about that. 
Paul says : " For we know that if our earthly house of this 
tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, a 
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." It 
is the privilege of every child of God to know that he is 
saved, and of every man and woman that is not saved. 
God will teach you to-night, if you are willing to confess 
that you are lost, if you will let Him be your teacher. Let 
us not deceive ourselves. Now, just ask yourselves the 
question, " Am I saved, or am I lost ? " And it is the lost 
ones that I want to speak to to-night, because it was the 
lost ones that Christ came to save. He came to call sin- 
ners, not the righteous. He came to seek and to save that 
which was lost. He came for no other purpose — only to 
save sinners. I met a person not long ago who said he 
was lost because He had committed so many sins that God 
didn't have any love for him, that God didn't care for him 
any more. Now I may be speaking to some to-night that 
think they are so far from God that God hasn't any love 
for them, that He won't care for them. Now let me say 
that instead of proving that you are not lost, you want to 
confess that you are a sinner. Christ came to seek and 
to save that which was lost. Christ came to save the un- 
godly. Then make out yourself ungodly. If I want to 
buy a piece of land, I can't get too good a title for the land. 
The best title that you can have to salvation is to find out 
that you are lost. It was Adam's fall that brought out 
God's love. God never told Adam, when He put him in 
Eden, that He loved him. It was after he was lost. It 
was that very thing that brought out the love of God. 



i3° 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



There was an Englishman in Chicago, the winter be- 
fore the fire, who was much impressed with the sudden growth 
of the city. He went back to Manchester, where he told 
the people about- the city only forty years old with all its fine 
buildings, its colleges, its churches. It was, he thought, a 
most wonderful city. But no one seemed to take any in- 
terest in Chicago. " But," he says, " one day the news 
came flashing over the wires that Chicago was on fire. 
The moment the people heard about the Chicago fire they 
became suddenly interested about Chicago. Then every 
man that he had tried to tell about Chicago became sud- 
denly interested, and they couldn't hear too much." The 
news came flashing over the wires that half the city was 
burnt. " Well," he said, " there were men there that 
couldn't help but weep." At last came the news that 
one hundred thousand people were burned out of their 
houses, and were in danger of starvation unless im- 
mediate help were sent. Then these men came for- 
ward and gave their thousands. It was the calamity 
of Chicago that brought out the love and pity of 
those men. In Chicago men went to bed on Sun- 
day night millionaires, and Monday morning all was 
swept away. I didn't see a man shed a tear over the loss 
of his property. At last the news came flashing over the 
wires that help was coming — that a delegation was coming 
from New York that was bringing clothing and food and 
money, and I saw men weep like little children then. It 
was that that touched the heart of Chicago. I never 
loved America so much in my life. I loved the whole 
world. We couldn't help but love others, because they 
loved us. 

And so it was the calamity of Adam that brought out 
God's love. A man said to me he wanted to be saved, but 
said he couldn't be saved until God sought him. I said to 
him, " My friend, how old are you ? " He was thirty years 



CHRIST CAME TO SEEK AND SAVE. 131 

old, he said. I looked. at him ; " and did God never seek 
you ? " " No, Sir," he said ; " I am anxious, but I cannot 
be saved unless God seeks me." Do you believe there is a 
man in the City of New York that has lived thirty years that 
Christ hasn't sought ? Is there a man within the hearing 
of my voice that Christ never sought after ? That boy sit- 
ting there — do you suppose Christ never sought him ? That 
young lady who is laughing — do you suppose Christ never 
sought her ? The old man there — do you think Christ 
never sought him ? Do you tell me that there is a man in 
this hall whom Christ never sought ? No ; that man isn't 
here. Not only that, but he has been seeking you ever 
since you were born. You never hear a Gospel sermon but 
that the Son of God is seeking for your soul in that ser- 
mon. You never hear the Gospel preached in any part of 
the world but that the Son of God is seeking for you 
through that Gospel invitation. Did no man ever hand you 
a tract while walking up the street ? That was the Son of 
God seeking you through that tract. Who was seeking 
you ? Certainly not Satan. Satan might put it in your 
heart to profess religion, but he didn't put it into the heart 
of a man to circulate tracts. It takes grace to do that. 
Did you never have a stranger come up to you and talk to 
you kindly, and plead with you to become a Christian ? 
That was the Son of God. He put it into his heart to do 
that. Was that Satan's work ? O, my friends, it was the 
Son of God seeking for your soul through that man. Haven't 
you had some godly minister talk with you, and didn't some 
of his spirit come over you that made you tremble at the 
thought of death and the judgment ? Haven't you felt an 
unusual power in the meeting, drawing you away from the 
world ? That was the Son of God seeking you through that 
minister or through that sermon or through that tract. 
When we were in Brooklyn I found a man in the inquiry 
room that was greatly troubled about his soul. He told 



132 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



me he had a godly, sainted mother ; that she had died and 
he had her picture put upon the wall, but he had been liv- 
ing such a miserable life he had to turn the face of that 
picture toward the wall ; that mother's prayer haunted him 
so he could not sleep. That was the Son of God seeking for 
that young man through the picture on the wall. Don't 
come into this hall and say that Christ never sought for 
your soul. Don't go into that terrible delusion that you are to 
wait for some more favorable season. From childhood and 
through all these years He has been seeking for your lost 
soul. I wish I could make that real to you to-night. 

Oh, if you understood what a lost soul was ; what it cost 
God to redeem it, and what it means that Christ should leave 
the throne of Heaven and come down to this world. He 
passed by others, He passed by the Pharisees, He passed 
by the assembly in the Temple, He came clear down into 
the manger, He did not take up the rich and the powerful, 
but the lowly and the humble to Heaven. He was rich, 
yet for our sakes He became poor. O, if we could only 
see lost souls as Christ saw them, we would not be con- 
sulting our ease. We would hear and see the salvation of 
the Son of God and strive after Heaven. If you could 
realize the reward of a saved soul and the punishment of a 
soul that has rejected the Saviour, you would say that your 
soul was worth being saved. Yes, my friends, Christ knew 
what a lost soul meant, and that is what brought Him down 
from Heaven. If there are any who are not awake to this 
great question, I want them to wake up now, or you will be 
lost. Lost ! Do you know what it means ? Do you know what 
it means to be without hope and without God in the world ? 
The other evening as I was going home, I heard a man run- 
ning up behind me. I turned and was accosted by one who 
said : " Sir, I just passed two ladies, and I heard one of them 
say, ' That is Mr. Moody.' Are you Mr. Moody ? " I told 
him I was. He then said " I want you to pray for me, 



CHRIST CAME TO SEEK AND SAVE. I33 

Mr. Moody. I want you to intercede with Christ for my 
lost and sinful soul. I am without God and without hope 
in this world." Thank God, that was a man who had been 
woke up. He realized he was lost. I hope that there will 
be ten thousand people in the city of New York who will 
wake up too. There will be help for them when they wake 
up to the fact that their souls are lost — that they are in the 
world without God and without hope. Satan goes around 
among you and among all the people in this city — yes, in 
all the world — telling them that they are not lost. Many 
men are under the power of the devil and don't believe 
they are lost. Do you think that Christ would have come 
into the world if man had not been lost ? Do you think 
that He would have suffered a cruel death on the Cross if 
man could have been saved any other way ? What does 
the Cross mean ? What does the old story of Bartimeus 
mean, unless it is to save us from that terrible hell ? Lost ! 
Oh, that that word would ring through the hall and sink 
down into the soul of every man who is without God 
and without hope in the world. Lost ! We know what it 
means to lose our property. I came across a friend the 
other day, who from being rich a few months ago had lost 
all. Of course, I sympathized with him, and we all sym- 
pathize with those we know where they have lost their all. 
But what is the loss of property in comparison with the 
loss of our soul. We mourn with them that lose their 
health ; but what is the loss of health to the loss of our 
soul ? If I know my own mind I would rather lose my 
health and hasten down to the grave within thirty days, sav- 
ing my soul, than to live on and lose it. We mourn with 
them that lose their reputation, their position in society ; 
but what is that in comparison with Satan's leading 
them away, and, being overtaken by their sins, losing 
their souls ? We know of those who by calamity have 
been deprived of their families, who have lost their beauti- 



I34 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ful homes, who have been cast into prison, and suffered 
innocently ; we mourn with them and sympathize with them. 
But in this case their afflictions are only for a day, and they 
may become heirs of the Kingdom. 

Think of a man, though, that has suffered all these 
things and then lost his very soul into the bargain. I was 
in the Eye Infirmary the other day — and that reminds 
me. Last evening, when I was speaking of Bartimeus I 
saw right in front of me here a man overcome with great 
excitement and emotion • he started and jumped up like a 
fish jumps up after a fly. I could not understand it then, 
but now I hear that the poor man was blind himself. Oh, 
if that man is in the hall to-night, I pray God to bless him. 
He has found that he has a soul to save, and I ask all Chris- 
tian people here to-night to pray for him. God bless him. 
But as I was saying, I was in the Eye Infirmary the other 
day, when a woman came in with a beautiful babe. I was 
there talking to the doctor about a boy in the Sabbath-school. 
The woman said to the doctor : " Doctor, my child has not 
had its eyes open for a few days, and I have come to see 
if there can't be something done for him. I did not like 
to open them, for it seemed to hurt him." The doctor, 
thereupon, pulled down the eyelids of the child, and the child 
gave a loud scream of pain. But he went on and made an 
examination, and then turning to the poor woman, said : 
" Your child is blind of that eye." He then opened the 
other and said : " Yes, and this one too ; your child will 
never see again." And it seemed to burst upon the poor 
woman so suddenly and so unexpectedly, that she screamed 
out at the top of her voice ; " Oh, will my darling child 
never see me again ? Oh, my darling child ! oh, my darling 
child ! " She pressed the child to her bosom, and I had to 
weep too. Don't you sympathize with that poor mother ? 
Don't you suppose I sympathize with her ? Yes ; but if I 
know my heart, I would rather lose my sight — have my eyes 



CHRIST CAME TO SEEK AND SA VE. 



135 



dug out as Samson's were — than to lose my soul. What is 
sight to the soul ? Yes, I would a thousand times rather 
lose my sight on earth and see God in heaven than have my 
sight here and darkness beyond the grave. 

A friend of mine in Chicago took his Sabbath-school out 
on an excursion on the cars once. A little boy was allow- 
ed to sit on the platform of the car, when by some mis- 
chance he fell, and the whole train passed over him. They 
had to go on a half a mile before they could stop. They 
went back to him and found that the poor little fellow 
had been cut and mangled all to pieces. Two of the 
teachers went back with the remains to Chicago. Then 
came the terrible task of telling the parents about it. When 
they go to the house they dared not go in. They were wait- 
ing there for five minutes before any one had had the courage 
to tell the story. But at last they ventured in. They 
found the family at dinner. The father was called out — 
they thought they would tell the father first. He came out 
with the napkin in his hand. My friend said to him : " I 
have got very bad news to tell you. Your little Jimmy has 
got run over by the cars." The poor man turned deathly 
pale and rushed into the room crying out " Dead, dead." 
The mother sprang to her feet and came out to the sitting- 
room where the teachers were. When she heard the sad 
story she fainted dead away at their feet. " Moody," said 
my friend " I wouldn't be the messenger of such tidings 
again if you give me the whole of Chicago. I never suffer- 
ed so much. I have got a son dearer to me than my life, and 
yet I would rather have a team a mile long run over him 
than that he should die without God and without hope." 
What is the loss of a child to the loss of a soul ? 

Oh let us be wise for eternity ; let us seek the kingdom 
of God now ; let us give to the Lord our hearts. The Son 
of God came to seek and to save that which was lost. Will 
you take your place among the lost, or will you seek the 



136 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



kingdom of God ? If you seek the kingdom of God, you 
have the word of the Son of God that thou shall find it. 
Do you not want to be saved now ? Do you not want to be 
brought out from the curse of the lost ? Do you not want to 
escape the damnation of hell ? The Lord Jesus is here to 
seek and to save. Will you let him save you now? You 
remember when the Atlantic went down on the coast of 
Newfoundland, there was a young man on board, a business 
man just coming home. About five hundred men, women, 
and children, if you recollect, went down on that awful day 
to a watery grave. Well, there came a dispatch from some 
of the wreck to his friends saying that he was gone. It 
plunged the whole family into mourning. His partner in 
Detroit closed the store and put crape upon the door. But 
after a few hours there came another dispatch flashing 
over the wires — " Saved " with his own name signed to it. 
That partner was so gratified that he had the dispatch 
framed and hung up in the office. When anyone goes 
into that store to-day, he can see the word " Saved. " Oh, 
young man, go home and tell your mother, and tell your 
friends that you are saved. Tell them that Jesus has taken 
compassion upon you. He will save you if you will let 
Him. A story is told of Rowland Hill, the great preacher. 
Lady Ann Erskine was passing by in her carriage and she 
asked her coachman who that was that was drawing such 
a large assembly. He replied that it was Rowland Hill. 
" I have heard a good deal about him," she said ; " drive 
up near the crowd." Mr. Hill soon saw her, and saw that 
she belonged to the aristocracy. He all at once stopped in 
the midst of his discourse and said : " My friends, I have 
something for sale." This astonished his hearers. " Yes, 
I have something for sale ; it is the soul of Lady Ann 
Erskine. I is there any one here that will bid for her 
soul ? Ah, do I hear a bid ? Who bid ? Satan bids. 
Satan, what will you give for her soul ? ' I will give riches, 



CHRIST CAME TO SEEK AND SAVE. 137 

honor, and pleasure.' But stop. Do I hear another bid ? 
Yes, Jesus Christ bids. Jesus, what will you give for her 
soul ? 'I will give eternal life.' Lady Ann Erskine you have 
heard the two bids — which will you take ? " And Lady 
Ann fell down on her knees and cried out, " I will have 
Jesus." The devil lies to you when he promises, but 
Christ always keeps his word. 

O, sinner, let the question be settled now for time and 
eternity, and there'll be a shout to-night around the throne. 
What would the world be without Jesus ? He is knocking 
at your heart to-night. I knew a mother who had a little 
boy that was dying, and he looked out of the window and 
said he saw dark mountains over there. The mother told 
him she did not see them, but he continued to see them, and 
he said he must cross them, and asked his mother if she 
wouldn't take him in her arms and carry him over. So the 
time will come to you, O sinner. That mother prayed for 
her boy, that he might see Jesus coming to carry him over 
the mountains. Then Eddie said, " Don't you hear the 
angels, mother ? O take me ! " But she told him that 
Jesus would take him, and the little fellow prayed, and then 
opened his eyes and said, " Good-bye, mother ; Jesus has 
come." O, sinner, Jesus will carry you to the kingdom of 
God if you will only let him. " The Son of Man is come 
to seek and to save that which was lost." 



SEEK THE LORD WHILE HE MAY 
BE FOUND." 



You will find my text this evening in that 55th chapter 
of Isaiah, in the 6th verse : " Seek the Lord while He may 
be found, and call ye upon Him while He is near." You 
that have been here for the last two nights will remember 
that I have been speaking from the text : " For the Son of 
Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." I 
have been talking about God — as to how God is seeking 
for the sinner. To-night I want to turn the question, and 
talk of man's state. Under this text we have got to-night 
man is told to seek the Lord. " Seek the Lord while He 
many be found, and call ye upon Him while He is near." 
Now, I have learned this during the past few years in deal- 
ing with men, that there isn't much hope of being saved 
until they seek the Lord with all their heart. One reason 
that men do not rind the Lord is that they don't seek for 
him with all their heart. Very often you meet people 
who say, " Well, I don't know as I have any objections to 
be saved." Well, I don't know as I ever knew of any one 
that found Christ that had that spirit. You have got to 
have something beyond that. I said to a man some 
time ago, that I could tell him the day he was going to be 
converted. I said to him, " I can tell you when you will 
be converted, although I ain't a prophet, and although I 
don't pretend to be a prophet. " Well," said he, " I would 

like to have you tell me that, for I would like to know my- 
138 



■SEEK THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND." 



139 



self." "Well," I said, "you shall find Him when you 
seek for Him, and search for Him with all your heart." 
In the 29th chapter of Jeremiah and the 13th verse it 
says : " And ye shall seek Me and find Me when ye shall 
search for Me with all your heart." I wish men would 
seek for Christ as they seek for wealth. I wish men would 
seek for Christ as they seek for position in this world. 
Man prepares his feast and there is a great rush to see 
who will get there first. God prepares His feast and the 
excuses come in, " I pray thee have me excused." Sup- 
posing I should state that last night a man came into this 
place and lost a very valuable present ; something he 
valued a great deal more than the value of the present, 
because it was the gift of his dying mother. Suppose he 
should send up a note to me saying, "Mr. Moody, I lost 
last night a very valuable diamond, and I am willing to 
give any one that can find that diamond twenty thousand 
dollars." I am sure there would be a great search. How 
many do you suppose would be seeking for that diamond ? 
I would not give much for my sermon to-night. A man 
might say, " I am poor, and if I could find that diamond 
wouldn't that take me out of poverty and out of want ? " 
You wouldn't wait until I got through my sermon, but you 
would be looking down at your feet and under the benches. 
My friend, isn't the salvation of your soul worth more than 
all the diamonds that the world has seen ? " Isn't it worth 
more than the whole world itself, and isn't it the best thing 
you can do to-night to seek the Lord ? 

Not only that, but it is a command to seek the Lord 
while He may be found, and call ye upon Him while He 
is near. It is just as much a command for you to seek 
the Lord as it is that you sha'n't swear. It is just as much 
a command as it is that you sha'n't steal. It is a com- 
mand. There are a great many commandments. Some 
people have got an idea that there are only ten command- 



140 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



ments in the Bible. There are thousands of them, and 
this is one of them. It is the voice of the Lord Himself. 
Seek Him with all your heart. Now just see how men 
seek for wealth. When the California fever — the gold 
fever — broke out. men left their wives and left their children 
and left their parents and their homes and luxury, and went 
out to the Pacific coast and slept out in the open air and un- 
der tents and endured want. What for ? That they might 
get wealth. They could not make too great a sacrifice to 
get wealth, and when I was out there in business I 
was amazed when news came that gold was found one 
hundred miles away. They would pack up, men, women, 
and children, and away they would go. A whole town 
would move just to seek wealth. Then they went out to 
Australia in the time of the gold fever in that country. 
They were willing to make almost any sacrifice. Look 
and see these politicians work. Let one of them be 
nominated alderman or for some position under the 
Government, and how they will seek your vote. They will 
come around to your house early in the morning just to 
seek your vote. They don't sleep at night ; they are will- 
ing to do everything they can do to accomplish their pur- 
pose. 

Let us go and learn a lesson from that. If there is no 
reality in this gift of God, if it is all a myth, then let us 
dismiss it. If it is true and we can find the Lord by seek- 
ing Him, let us seek Him. A man will go around this 
world for his health ; he will cross oceans and climb steep 
mountains just to get his health. Thanks be to God, you 
haven't got to go around the world to get salvation. You 
haven't got to go out of this building to find salvation ; " ye 
shall find Me when ye shall search for Me with all your 
heart." Now there isn't anything a man values as he does 
his life. You take a man on a wrecked vessel ; that vessel 
is going down ; that man may be worth a million, and the 



"SEEK THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND." i 4I 

only way he can save his life is to give up that million — 
he would do it as quick as a flash. Now the gift of God is 
eternal life ; it is life without end. Christ says, " What 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul ? Now is it true that a man can be saved 
here to-night ? I would like to ask this audience a ques- 
tion. Is it true that a man can find the Lord here to-night ? 
Now won't you just stop and think a moment ? Dr. Pax- 
ton, do you believe the Lord can be found here to-night ? 
Do you believe it, Mr. Jesup ? Do you, Mr. Dodge ? (Mr. 
Dodge — I do.) Now my friend, do you believe it ? 
Young man, do you believe that the Lord can be found 
here to-night ? If He can be found, why not seek for Him, 
and why not look? This cold, bleak night maybe the 
night of your salvation. If it is true that the Lord is worth 
more than the whole world, and He can be found by seek- 
ing, why not seek for Him, not with half a heart, but with 
all your heart. 

I read a number of years ago of a vessel that was 
wrecked. The life-boats were not enough to take all the 
passengers. A man who was swimming in the water swam 
up to one of the life-boats that were full and seized it 
with his hand. They tried to prevent him, but the man 
was terribly in earnest about saving his life, and one of 
the men in the boat just drew a sword and cut off his hand. 

But the man didn't give up : he reached out the other 
hand. He was terribly in earnest. He wanted to save 
his life. But the man in the boat took the sword and cut 
off his other hand. But the man did not give up. He 
swam up to the boat and seized it with his teeth. Some 
of them said, " Let us not cut his head off," and they drew 
him in. That man was terribly in earnest, and, my friends, 
if you want to get into the kingdom of God you will seek 
your soul's salvation to-night. Be in earnest once as for 
your life and seek the kingdom of God with all your heart, 



142 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



and you shall find it to-night. It will be the night of your 
salvation. It is a good time to seek the Lord while the 
spirit of God is abroad in the community. I contend that 
this is a proof that the Lord can be found here to-night, 
because I don't believe there has been a night but that 
some have found Him. Last night a brother came to my 
private room and called me and said, " I want to intro- 
duce you to some one," and there stood a wife, her face lit 
up with joy. She wanted to tell me that her husband was 
converted. She said, " I have been praying for him these 
twenty years,and he has found the Lord to-night." " Seek 
ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him 
while He is near." 

How many men were there that were converted in the 
great revival of '57 and '58, and yet some people cry out 
against revivals — they had rather be converted at any time 
than during a revival. It was not long after the revival of 
'57 and '58 that the nation was deluged with blood, and 
half a million of men laid down their lives. Wasn't it the 
best thing they could have done, to seek the Lord then ? 
It was my privilege to be in the army at that time. I was 
by their cots when I saw them die. I never saw a man 
all through the war that regretted that he became a Chris- 
tian. The best thing they could do was to call upon the 
Lord. It was a great calamity, and came right home to 
the heart of the nation. We are just now, I am afraid, 
going to have some of this sad work. I believe that we 
are even now on the eve of just such work. ' I believe that 
judgments are going -to happen upon this nation again. 
Grace always precedes judgments. A great revival is in 
progress all over the country. So there was in Jerusalem 
a day of grace, but the opportunity was spurned. Jerusa- 
lem and the country took no heed to their ways, and soon 
Titus appeared with a great army and besieged it, and 
more than one million, one hundred thousand people 



"SEEK THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND r 143 

perished. Those men rejected the Gospel and the Word 
of God. So at the present day men won't call upon Christ 
when He may be found, or seek Him when He is near. All 
along in the history of the Church it is remarked that 
before some great calamity has fallen upon the earth there 
has been a great day of grace, offering salvation to those 
who will accept it. Before God punishes people He holds 
out before them a chance to repent and to escape His 
wrath. 

And now we hear Jesus calling to repentance thoughout 
all the land. It is time, my friends, to be up and doing. Save 
yourselves and then plead with your friends and bring them 
to Jesus. Tell them the glad tidings and bring them 
into the fold of the good shepherd. If we are faithful 
now and watch for souls we shall see in every town and 
city thousands who will accept Christ. It is time for us to 
go out and say to our friends and relatives, " Come in ■ 
the Lord is coming ; the Lord is at work. Jesus of 
Nazareth is passing through the city. Let us call upon 
Him while He may be found ; let us implore Him to save 
us while He is near." The very text implies that the time 
is come when the world should throw off its sloth and 
wake to repentance. The text implies that God is near 
and pleads with His people ; that the time and the son of 
God are near now. Isn't it true that He is here to-night ? 
Isn't it true that He is seeking for you when you seek 
for Him ? Seek, then, the Lord while He may be found ; 
call upon Him while he is near. Mr. Sankey sung to-night 
about those virgins. We read that five sought to gain ad- 
mission too late. There was a time that they might have 
called upon the Lord ; there was a time when, had they 
sought they would have found him. But they slumbered 
and slept until it was too late. Then they cried, but the 
door was shut — the day of grace was over. And so it may 
be the same with you. The day of grace may be drawing 



i 4 4 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



to a close with you, too. It may be that I am speaking to 
many here for the last time. This may be the last year they 
may have on earth. The prophecy may be true in regard 
to you and me — " This year thou shalt die." Is it or isn't 
it a time to seek the Kingdom of God, to seek His face 
while Christ is calling upon us to repent, while the Spirit of 
God is moving upon our hearts ? Isn't it the very best 
time - to seek the Lord while He may be found ? Those 
antediluvian people called upon Noah to open the door of 
the ark and take them. But it was too late. God will 
shut the door against you, too. You will soon be without 
hope. Undoubtedly these men, women, and children call- 
ed upon God to save them on that terrible day ; but the day 
of grace was over for them. The day of wrath then had 
come, and the day of judgment had fallen upon them. Oh, 
who shall stand on the day of wrath ! When the Lord 
shall shake the earth, what shall then save the souls of 
men ? The day of grace is here. Save yourselves. Wash 
yourselves in His precious blood and be redeemed. Oh, 
this very night, this very hour, let there be a cry for salva- 
tion. In the tenth chapter of Romans it is written, " For 
whoseover shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be 
saved." I heard of a man away off in the mining district 
who had wandered from his house and got lost. In that 
region the ground is full of holes, and some pretty deep 
ones, too. But it was night and he could not make his 
way along. Had he undertaken to move on, there were 
the holes before him, and every step might precipitate 
him into a cavern. He did not know what to do and he could 
not stir a step. At last he commenced to cry out. " Help, 
help, help," and his cry was heard ; they came with lan- 
terns and brought him safely out of his danger. The 
depths of sin are surrounding you ; the next step may 
land you into darkness and death. Old man, do you hear ? 
Young lady, do not laugh at it. Don't make light of this 



"SEEK THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND r I45 

warning voice. " Seek the Lord while He may be found — 
call upon Him while He is near." - 

Let me warn you against the next verse. A great many 
people put the seventh verse ahead of the sixth. "Let 
the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his 
thoughts." If we would be saved call upon God first, and 
then God will give you help, and by His power you can 
then turn away from sin and from your evil thoughts, and 
will get pardon. But you haven't power to give up your 
evil courses until you call upon God and until He gives 
you strength. After you have called upon the Lord, you 
must receive Him when He comes ; you must make room 
for Him. He has gone to make room for you, and you 
must make room for Him. I once found a man in the in- 
quiry room who was puzzled to know how there would be 
room for the saved in heaven. I tell you, my friends, as I 
told him, you needn't borrow trouble on that account. If 
He finds He will not have room for you or me or for any 
of His chosen people in the heaven that He now has He 
will make another. Can He not make another heaven by 
a word ? Can he not make another place of happiness as 
easy as He made the present one ? The Lord God of 
Heaven can make plenty of room for you. You must not 
give that as an excuse. The Lord can make all the room 
He wants. Now, my friends, let me ask you this question. 
In all candor, why don't you settle the question now ? Will 
the Son of God have more power than He has to-night ? 
Will He be more ready to use it for your salvation at any 
other time than He is to-night ? Hasn't he said that " all 
power is given unto Him both in Heaven and on earth ? " 
Has He not the power to save every one here ? Is He 
not able to save unto the uttermost ? Hasn't He the 
power, and hasn't he the will? Hasn't He said, "As I 
live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the 
wicked. Oh, turn ye ! turn ye ! Why should ye die, oh, 



146 GLAD TIDINGS. 

House of Israel ? " If you turn now and call upon Him, 
He will forgive your sins ; He will forgive every one all 
his sins, no matter how many they are. He will save you 
if you truly repent and write your name in the Book of 
Life. But you must call upon Him with the heart. 

As Spurgeon remarks, the Bible does not say you must 
have new heads, or that you must seek him with your head, 
but it says you must have new hearts, and must seek him 
with your heart. If it meant head, it would have said so. 
Seek ye the Lord, therefore, with your hearts, and Christ 
will enter into your hearts and not into your heads. Give 
Christ your whole heart and He will enter into it. If your 
heart is all right, your head will be also. . For out of the 
heart proceeds all evil ; let that reservoir of sin be broken 
up and emptied, and all the rest of you will come around 
right. Is there one here to-night who will not cry out, 
" God be merciful to me a sinner ? " " Lord have mercy 
upon me ? " Why not call upon Him ? Why not seek the 
Lord now? Why not make up your mind that you will 
not leave the room until the great question of eternity is 
settled ? If it is true what these gentlemen have said here 
to-night, when I asked them the question, that the Lord 
could be found, why don't you find Him? Why should 
you let the night pass without seeking Him ? It is com- 
manded, '■ Seek the Lord while He may be found." Don't 
put it off until it is too late. Don't neglect salvation. 
Some people say, " W r hy what have I done ? " I tell you if 
you have done nothing but neglect salvation you will go to 
death and ruin. Look at the man on the river in his boat. 
He is not rowing ; he is making no effort ; but he has his 
hands folded, and is letting his boat drift down the stream 
toward the rapid. The current is taking him on without 
any help from him. He will soon go over the rapid into 
the jaws of death. All he has to do is to sit still and be 
lost. Yes, I tell you, if you don't actually do any sin, yet 



"SEEK THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND r 147 

if you neglect Christ, and neglect salvation as a gift from 
God you must perish. I am told that there were two men 
seen above the falls of Niagara. They were drinking 
champagne and carousing. They had no thought of 
danger. They formed no perception of the end that was 
awaiting them. They sang and they drank. But by and 
by a warning voice came to their ears. They looked at 
the friend on shore, but paid no attention. They even 
mocked him ; they lifted up the bottle, drank to him and 
shook the. bottle at him. Some one further on seeing their 
danger also undertook to warn them. But they treated 
his Voice with laughter and derision. There are some 
here to-night that act just the same way. You come here 
and laugh and make light of the solemn services and ridi- 
cule the Word of God. These men mocked the danger, 
also. They drifted a little further on when a third voice 
was lifted up to give them notice of the approaching 
rapids. But the men still mocked on, and the current still 
took them on every second nearer to the great and fatal 
plunge. But they soon saw the water going over the falls, 
and in wild desperation seized the oars. They battled 
against the current with all their strength. Too late ! 
Too late ! They had neglected it too long, and with a wild 
cry they were forever engulfed. What a picture ! And yet 
hundreds and thousands have died just the same way. 

By and by will come the piercing cry, " it's too late ? " 
To-night I plead with you to neglect it no longer. Some 
of you here may hear the appeal for the last time. 
O, may the Holy Spirit open your eyes to-night. While 
we were in Europe a man came into one of the meetings 
in the coal region, and when the audience was dismissed 
he was seen to remain standing against a post. One of 
the elders approached him, and asked why he remained. 
He said he had made up his mind not to leave that church 
until he found the Kingdom of God. The elder remained 



148 GLAD TIDINGS. 

with him for along time, and at last the miner made a sur- 
render. The next day he went into the coal-pit, and before 
night the mine fell and buried him. He was taken from 
the ruins just before life became extinct, and was heard to 
say, " It was a good thing • I settled it last night." Wasn't 
it a good thing ? Young lady, what say you ? Young man, 
what do you think ? When Mr. Sankey and I were in the 
the north of England, I was preaching one evening, and 
before me sat a lady who was a skeptic. When I had 
finished, I asked all who were anxious to remain. Nearly 
all remained, herself among the number. I asked her if 
she was a Christian, and she said she was not nor did she 
care to be. I prayed for her there. On inquiry, I learned 
that she was a lady of good social position, but very 
worldly. She continued to attend the meetings, and in a 
week after I saw her in tears. After the sermon, I went 
to her and asked if she was of the same mind as before. 
She replied that Christ had come to her and she was 
happy. Last Autumn I had a note from her husband 
saying she was dead, that her love for the Master had con- 
tinually increased. When I read that note, I felt paid for 
crossing the Atlantic. She worked sweetly after her con- 
version, and was the means of winning many of her 
fashionable friends to Christ. O, may you seek the Lord 
while he may be found, and may you call upon Him while 
you may. 



GRACE I. 



I am going to take to-night a subject rather than a text. 
I want to talk to you about free grace. I say free grace ; 
perhaps I had better drop the word " free " and say just 
" grace." There is a sermon just in the meaning of the 
word. It is one of those words that are very little under- 
stood at the present time, like the word gospel. There 
are a great many that are partakers of the spirit of Christ 
or of grace that don't know its meaning. I think it is a 
good idea to go to Webster's dictionary and look up the 
meaning of these words that we hear so often but don't 
fully understand. You seldom go into a religious assem- 
bly but you hear the word grace, and yet I was a partaker 
of the grace of God for years before I knew what it meant. 
I could not tell the difference between grace and law. 
Now grace means unlimited mercy, undeserved favor, or 
unmerited love. I had a man come to-day to see me, and 
his plea was that he was not fit to be saved. He said 
there was no hope for him because he had sinned all his 
life and there was nothing good in him. I was very much 
gratified to hear him say that. There is hope for that 
man — and I suppose he is here to-night — and there is hope 
for any man who thinks there is nothing good in him. 
That was the lesson Christ tried to teach the Jews — the 
lesson of grace. But they were trying to prove themselves 
to be better than other people. They were of the seed of 



150 GLAD TIDINGS. 

Abraham and under the Mosaic law, and better than the 
people about them. 

Now let us get at the source of this stream, that has 
been flowing through the world these hundreds of years. 
You know that men have been trying to find the source of 
the Nile. Wouldn't it be as profitable to try and find the 
source of grace, because this is a stream we are all inter- 
ested in. I want to call your attention to the first chapter 
of John, the 14th and 17 th verses : " And the Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, 
the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father, full of 
grace and truth." Then the 17th verse : "For the law is 
given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." 
Then in the 5th chapter of Romans, the 15th verse : "But 
not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through 
the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of 
God, and the gift by grace which is by one man, Jesus 
Christ, hath abounded unto many." There it is' called 
the free gift — it abounded unto many. Then in Paul's 
epistle to the Corinthians, the 1st chapter and the 3d 
verse : " Grace be unto you and peace from God, our Fa- 
ther, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God 
always on your behalf for the grace of God which is given 
you by Jesus Christ." Now bear in mind that He is the 
God of all grace. We wouldn't know anything about grace 
if it wasn't for Jesus Christ. Men talk about grace, but 
they don't know much about it. These bankers, they 
talk about grace. If you want to borrow a thousand dol- 
lars, if you can~give good security, they will let you have 
it and take your note, and you give your note and say, " So 
many months after date I promise to pay a thousand dol- 
lars." Then they give you what they call three days' 
grace, but they make you pay interest for those three days. 
That ain't grace. Then when your note comes due, if you 
can't pay but nine hundred and fifty dollars, they would 



GRACE I. I51 

sell everything you have got and make you pay the fifty 
dollars. Grace is giving the interest, principal, and all. I 
tell you, if you want to get any grace, you must know God. 
He is the God of all grace. He wants to deal in grace ; 
He wants to deal with that unmerited mercy, undeserved 
favor, unmerited love ; and if God don't love man until he 
is worthy of His love, He won't have time for very much 
love for him, He is the God of all grace. 

Unto whom does He offer grace ? I would like to have 
you turn to your Bibles to two or three texts ; to the 21st 
chapter of Matthew, the 28th verse : " But what think ye ? 
A certain man had two sons and he came to the first and 
said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He answered 
and said, I will not ; but afterward he repented and went. 
And he came to the second and said likewise. But he an- 
swered and said, I go, sir ; and went not. Whether of 
them twain did the will of his father ? They say unto him, The 
first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That 
the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God 
before you." Why ? Because He loved those publicans 
and harlots more than he did those Pharisees ? No ; it was 
because they wouldn't repent, because they wouldn't take 
grace. They didn't believe they needed the grace of God. 
A man who believes that he is lost is near salvation. Why? 
Because you haver^t got to work to convince him that he 
is lost. Now here is a man that said he wouldn't go, and 
then he saw that he was wrong, and repented and went, 
and this man was the man that grace held up. Any man 
or any woman here to-night who will repent and turn to 
God, God will save him. It don't make any difference 
what your life has been in the past. He will turn to any 
that will turn to Him. I was preaching one Sunday in a 
church where there was a fashionable audience, and after 
I got through the sermon I said : "If there are any 
that would like to tarry a little while, and would 



J 5 2 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



like to stay and talk, I would be glad to talk with you." 
They all got up, turned around, and went out. I felt as 
though I was abandoned. When I was going out I saw a 
man getting behind the furnace. He hadn't any coat on, 
and he was weeping bitterly. I said, " My friend, what is 
the trouble ? " He said, " You told me to-night that I could 
be saved ; that the grace of God would reach me. You 
told me that there wasn't a man so far gone but the grace 
of God would reach him." He said : " I am an exile from 
my family ; I have drunk up twenty thousand dollars with- 
in the last few months ; I have drunk up the coat off my 
back, and if there is hope for a poor sinner like me I 
should like to be saved." It was just like a cup of re- 
freshment to talk to that man. I didn't dare give him 
money for fear that he would drink it up, but I got him a 
place to stay that night, took an interest in him, and got 
him a coat, and six months after that, when I left Chicago 
for Europe — four months after — that man was one of the 
most earnest Christian men I knew. The Lord had bless- 
ed him wonderfully. He was an active, capable man. The 
grace of God can save just such if they will only repent. I 
don't care how low he has become, the grace of God can 
purge him of all sin, and place him among the blessed. 
In proportion as man is a sinner much more does the grace 
of God abound. There isn't a man but that the grace of 
God will give him the victory if he will only accept it. 

I want you to turn a moment to a passage you will find 
in the 7 th chapter of Mark : " And from thence He arose, 
and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered 
into a house, and would have no man know it ; but He 
could not be hid. For a certain woman whose young daugh- 
ter had an unclean spirit heard Him, and came and fell at His 
feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phcenician by 
nation ; and she besought Him that He would cast forth 
the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her, 



GRACE I. 153 

" Let the. children first be filled, for it is not meet to take 
the children's bread and cast it unto the dogs. And she 
answered and said unto Him, Yes, Lord ; yet the dogs 
under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And He said 
unto her, For this saying go thy way ; the devil is gone 
out of thy daughter." Now, just see how Christ dealt with 
that woman — a Syro-Phcenician, a Gentile ; she didn't 
belong to the seed of Abraham at all. He came to save 
His own, but His own received Him not. Christ was 
willing to give to the Jews grace. He dealt in grace with 
a liberal hand, but those that He was desirous to shower 
grace upon wouldn't take it. But this woman belonged to 
a different people — and just hear her story. I wonder 
what would happen if Christ should come and speak that 
way now? Suppose He should come into this assembly 
and take any woman here and call her a dog. Why, that 
Syro-Phcenician woman might have said, " Call me a dog ! 
Talk to me like that ! Why I know a woman who belongs 
to the seed of Abraham who lives down near me, and she 
is the worst and meanest woman in the neighborhood. I 
am as good as she is any day." She might have gone 
away without a blessing if she had not felt her utter desti- 
tution and lost condition. But Jesus only said that to her 
just to try her, and after calling her a dog, she only broke 
forth into a despairing cry, " Yes, Lord — yes, Lord." 
Christ had said it was more blessed to give than to receive. 
She took His place and received His blessing and His 
commands. She was satisfied to be given only a crumb, 
as long as He heard her petition. So, instead of giving 
her a crumb, she got a whole loaf. And so will you get 
the fullest beneficence of Christ if you lift your heart up to 
Him. Oh, that many would but just take her place, 
understand how low and unworthy they are, and cry unto 
Jesus. If you do, Christ will lift you up and bless you. 
But then the great trouble is that people will not confess 



J 54 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



that they have need of grace. Such miserable Pharisaism 
is the worst feature of the present time. They think they 
can get salvation without the grace of God. The old say- 
ing is that when you come to Jesus as a beggar you go 
away as a prince. Instead of doing that, they feel so self- 
confident and proud that they come always as princes and 
go away beggars. If you want the Son of God to deal with 
you, come as a beggar and He will have mercy upon you. 
Look at the great crowd going up to Temple ; they feel 
they have strength of themselves, and all pass on, proud 
and haughty, except one poor man, who smites himself on 
the breast and says, " God be merciful to me a sinner." 

If you want to see the idea that the Jews had as to who 
was worthy, and how they thought that that kind of worthi 
ness should be rewarded, just take your Bibles and look at 
the seventh chapter of Luke. It reads there, " Now when 
He had ended all His sayings in the audience of the 
people, He entered into Capernaum. And a certain Cen- 
turion's servant who was dear unto Him was sick and ready 
to die. And when he heard of Jesus he sent unto Him the 
elders of the Jews, beseeching Him that He would come 
and heal His servant. And when they came to Jesus they 
besought Him instantly " — now, just listen — " saying that 
he was worthy for whom He should do this." Yes, that 
was the Jews' idea of the reason He should come, because 
he was " worthy." What made him worthy ? " For he 
loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue." He 
was not worthy because he was a sinner ; oh, no ; not at 
all. But he was worthy because " he hath built us a syna- 
gogue." Ha ! that was the same old story — the story of 
the present day. There is a great deal of that now. Give 
that man the most prominent place in church ; let him 
have the best pew and the one furthest up in church, be- 
cause he is " worthy." He has built the church perhaps ; 
or lie has endowed a seminary. No matter where his 



GRACE I. I55 

money came from. He may have got it gambling in stocks, 
or doing' something else of a like character ■ but he has 
given it to us. Oh, yes, he is worthy. He may have made 
his enormous gains by distilling whisky even. Make room 
for him, he has got a gold ring on ; make room for her, she 
has got a good dress on. So said the Jews ; Now, Lord, 
come at once, for he hath built us a synagogue. Oh, he is 
worthy . You must not refuse or halt ; You must come at 
once. That was the Jews' idea, and it is the idea of the 
world to-day. But how do you expect to get grace that 
way ? The moment you put it on the ground of being 
worthy of it, then to receive it would not be grace at all. 
It would only amount to this ; that if the Lord should give 
a man grace because He owed it to him, He would only be 
paying a debt. Jesus, however, went with them in this in- 
stance to teach them a lesson. Luke goes onto say: 
" Then Jesus went with them. And when He was not far 
from the house, the Centurion sent friends to Him saying 
unto Him, Lord trouble not Thyself for I am not worthy 
that Thou shouldst enter under my roof." That is the 
kind of humility we want ; that is the kind of men we are 
hunting after — a man that is not worthy. See how quick 
he will be saved when he is in that frame of mind. I sup- 
pose that some one had run in to tell this Centurion that 
Jesus was approaching the house. And the Centurion sent 
to Him to say he was not worthy that He should come un- 
to him, " neither thought I myself worthy to come unto 
Thee ; but say in a word and my servant shall be healed." 
This Centurion had faith at any rate. If he thought 
himself unworthy to come to Jesus, he sent friends whom 
he considered better than himself. How common it is to 
think yourself good and all other people bad. It is good 
to see a man consider himself a poor, unworthy man. 
" God, I didn't think myself worthy to come unto Thee, 
but say the word and my servant shall be healed." Thank 



I5 6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

God, he had faith. No matter how many sins we have if 
we only have faith. In this case, because he had faith 
Jesus healed his servant without coming to him at all. He 
hadn't to go to the house and examine his pulse, and see 
his tongue. Then he didn't have to write out a prescrip- 
tion and send him to the drug store. No ; he said, " All 
right, your servant shall live." " For I also am a man set 
under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say, unto 
one, Go, and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he 
cometh ; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. 
When Jesus heard these things, He marvelled." It is 
only twice, I think, that Jesus marvelled. He marvelled at 
the unbelief of the Jews ; and again, at the faith of the 
Centurion — " and turned Him about and said unto the peo- 
ple that followed Him, I say unto you, I have not found 
so great faith, no, not in Israel." Here is a Gentile, he 
said in effect, here is a man not of the seed of Abraham, 
and yet what faith he shows ! Why, here is a Centurion, 
and he has more faith than the chosen people of 
God. Jesus granted the petition at once. When he saw a 
genuine check presented for payment He cashed it at once. 
He pays instantly in the gold of Heaven, without any hesi- 
tation or discount. " And they that were sent, returning 
to the house, found the servant whole that had been sick." 
Found him perfectly well, leaping and dancing around 
the house, praising God. He had been at the point of 
death one minute, and the next he had been made perfectly 
well. 

\'ou may be made whole too, friends. You may even 
be on the borders of hell, and yet be made an inhabitant 
of the Kingdom of Heaven. Think of this you men that 
are the slaves of strong drink. You may be mangled and 
bruised by sin, but the grace of God can save you. He is 
the God of grace. I hope that grace will flow into your 
souls to-night. Christ is the sinner's friend. If you have 



GRACE I. 



*57 



read your Bibles carefully you will see that Christ always 
took the side of the sinner. Of course, He came down on 
the hypocrites, and well He might. Those haughty Phari- 
sees He took sides against, but where a poor, miserable, 
humble, penitent sinner came to Him for grace He always 
found it. You always read that He deals in grace, and to- 
night He will have mercy upon you that confess your sins 
to Him. If you want to be saved come right straight to 
Him. He comes to deal in grace : He comes to bless, 
and why don't you let Him ? Let Him bless you now. Let 
Him take your sins away now. A man said to me the 
other night, " I feel I have got to do something." I said 
to him, " If this grace is unmerited and free, what are you 
going to do ? " And I warn you to-night, my friends, 
against trying to work out your own salvation. It really is 
a question whether it don't keep more people out of the 
kingdom of God than anything else. When at Newcastle, 
I was preaching one night, and I said that grace was free ; 
that all were to stop trying to be saved. A woman came 
came down and said to me : " Oh ! how wretched lam; I 
have been trying to be a Christian, and yet you have been 
telling me to-night not to try." "Has that made you 
wretched ? " I asked. " Yes ; if I stop trying, what will 
become of me?" I said : " But if grace is free what are 
you going to do ? You cannot get it by working." She 
said, " I can't understand it." Well, let me call your 
attention now to a few passages of Scripture. I turn to 
the second Chapter of Ephesians and the 8th and 9th 
verses : " For by grace are ye saved through faith ; and 
that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God :" — " Not of 
works, lest any man should boast." 

Salvation is a gift from God. If a man worked it out, 
he would boast of what he had done, and say, " O, I did 
it." A Scotchman once said it took two persons to effect 
his salvation — " God gave me His grace and I fought 



I5 8 GLAD TIDINGS. 

against Him." It is not then for men to work, or they will 
boast of it, and when a man boasts you may be sure there 
is no conversion. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, 
neither can the leopard change his spots. We do not work 
to get salvation, but we work it out after we get it. If we 
are ever saved it must be by grace alone. If you pay any- 
thing for salvation it ceases to be a gift. But God isn't 
down here selling salvation. And what have you to give 
Him if He was ? What do you suppose you would give ? 
Ah, we're bankrupt. " The gift of God is eternal life ; " 
that's your hope. " He that climbeth up some other way, 
the same is a thief and a robber." Now who will take sal- 
vation to-night ? Oh, you may have it if you will. " To 
him that worketh the reward is not reckoned of grace but 
of death." The difference between Martha and Mary was 
that Martha was trying to do something for the Lord, and 
Mary was just taking something from Him as a gift. He'll 
smile upon you if you'll just take grace from Him. " It's 
to him that worketh not but believeth," that blessings 
come. After you get to the Cross, there you may work all 
you can. If you are lost, you go to hell in the full blaze 
of the Gospel. That grace is free to all. To every police- 
man here, every fireman, every usher, every singer, every 
man, woman, and child, every reporter, all of you. What 
more do you want God to do than He has done ? Oh, I 
hope the grace of God will reach every heart here. O, be 
wise, and open the door of your hearts and let in the King 
of glory. You'll be saved when you believe. It is written, 
" For the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation 
to all." If you are lost there is one thing you must do, 
and that is trample the grace of God under your^-feet. It 
won't be because you can't be saved, but because you 
won't. Young man, will you be saved to-night ? It's a 
question for you yourself to settle. If we could settle it 
for you we would, but you must believe for yourself. 



GRACE I. 



I S9 



Christ said to that poor sinning woman, " neither do I con- 
demn thee. Go and sin no more." O sinner, hear those 
words. O may the grace of God reach your hearts to- 
night. 



GRACE II 



Last night, if you remember, we were talking on the 
subject of grace, and to-night I want to continue the sub- 
ject. Last evening I brought the subject down to Titus, 
where he says that the grace of God has appeared, bring- 
ing salvation to all men. Now I want to call your attention 
to the fifth chapter of Romans and the 20th verse : 
" Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. 
But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. 
That as sin had reigned unto death, even so might grace 
reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus 
Christ, our Lord." Now sin reigns unto death. The 
penalty of the law of God is death. "The soul that 
sinneth, it shall die." No use of having a law if there is 
not a penalty attached to the disobedience of it. Suppose 
this State — the State of New York — should pass a law that 
you shall not steal or that you shall not murder, and put no 
penalty to the infraction of that law. What would be the 
use of that law ? What would it be good for ? Now sin 
hath reigned unto death, but grace hath reigned unto 
eternal life. It don't stop with death, grace don't. It 
carries us past death — right through the grave, clear over 
into the Promised Land. Now, in the closing verses of 
Deuteronomy, and in the first chapter of Joshua, you read 
that Moses brought the children of Israel down to Jordan. 
But he couldn't bring them any further. He was the 



GRACE II. 161 

representative of the law, and that is where the law brings 
us to — to Jordan. Jordan means death, judgment. After 
bringing them to death and judgment, he couldn't bring 
them any further, but left them there. The law brings us 
to death, and there it leaves us. It don't give life ; it never 
has given life, and it never can. Sin reigns unto death, 
but the grace of God hath reigned unto eternal life. So 
when Moses had brought the children of Israel down to 
Jordan, and couldn't go any further, then came Joshua and 
took the congregation over and away on their journey. 
Joshua means Jesus. And as Joshua led them past the Jor- 
dan, so Jesus will take His people through the dark valley 
of the shadow of death unto eternal life. He is the Good 
Shepherd and He came to save His people from their sins. 
When John came he appeared as the forerunner of grace 
and Jesus. He was the last representative of the old dis- 
pensation. He brought the people who came to be baptized 
down into the Jordan, and he left them in Jordan. When 
Christ came He commenced where John had left off. He 
went into the Jordan, and brought the people out of it. 
That is the difference between law and grace ; law slays a 
man but grace makes him live ; the law takes a man to 
death and judgment, but Christ comes and quickens him, 
giving eternal life. 

There is a great difference then between law and 
grace, and I want you to bear this in mind and keep the 
distinction between the two separate and clear in your 
minds. Let me repeat ; Law leads unto death, but grace 
to eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Some people are 
lingering around Sinai yet — around the old dispensation 
— around the law. You can't get them to come away 
from Horeb. It is better to come to the Mount of Olives, 
better to come to Calvary. Now I want to carry you to 
another verse, the 14th, of the sixth chapter of Romans. 
There it is written : " For sin shall not have dominion over 



1 62 GLAD TIDINGS. 

you ; for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What, 
then, shall we sin because we are not under the law, but 
under grace ? God forbid." Bear that in mind ; ye are not 
under the law, but under grace. The Lord Jesus came to 
bring us out from under the law. It is not any more thou 
shalt not do this ; thou shalt not do that. 1'hat was the 
law. Under that dispensation it was do and live — now it 
is live and do. Christ came and says, " If you love Me, 
keep My commandments." Before that it was thou 
shalt not do this or that. But grace reigns unto eternal 
life by Him, and if you love Him -you will keep His com- 
mandments, and grace shall bring you unto everlasting 
happiness. Yet, notwithstanding all these plain texts, 
some will still have it that we are not under grace, but 
remain under the law. Now just turn to the 21st chapter 
of Deuteronomy and the 18th verse, and you will see what 
would happen under this law : " If a man have a stub- 
born and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of 
his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when 
they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them. 
Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him and 
bring him out unto the elders of his city and unto the 
gate of his place. And they shall say unto the elders of 
his city, This, our son, is stubborn and rebellious ; he will 
not obey our voice ; he is a glutton and a drunkard. And 
all the men of his city shall stone him with stones that he 
die ; so shalt thou put evil away from among you, and all 
Israel shall hear and fear." 

A very strange state of things would take place now if 
we lived under the law. Think of a man in these days 
taking his son into Madison Square, and have the Alder- 
men of New York come up there and stone him to death. 
It would be pretty effectual in breaking up the rum-shops 
and the whiskey-selling saloons of New York. A man 
takes his son, who is a confirmed drunkard, and kills him 



GRACE II ^3 

or has him killed — wouldn't that soon put a stop to the buy- 
ing and selling of this vile whiskey and intoxicating and 
maddening stuff that is now going on throughout the coun- 
try ? The distillers would have a good deal of whiskey on 
their hands. But grace deals differently with men. See 
the prodigal son. He went away and lived a low and vi- 
cious life. He squandered all he had. He was a drunkard 
and spent his substance on harlots and thieves. How did 
his father treat him ? Did his father take him out and have 
him stoned to death ? No. That would have been his end 
under the law I have read to you ; but see how his father 
acted towards him under grace. He met him with a kiss 
and treated him with kindness and love. The law says, 
" Stone him ; " but grace says, " Forgive him." When 
Moses was in Egypt to punish Pharaoh, he turned the 
waters into blood. When Christ was on earth he turned 
the water into wine. That is the difference between law 
and grace. The law says, " Kill him ; " grace, " Forgive." 
Law says, " Let him die ; " grace says " Love him." Law 
makes us crooked ; grace straightens us. Law makes us 
vile ; grace cleanses us. That is the difference between 
law and grace. When the law came out of Horeb three 
thousand men were lost. At Pentecost, under grace, 
three thousand men got life. What a difference ? When 
Moses came to the burning bush, he was commanded to 
take the shoes from off his feet. When the Prodigal came 
home after sinning he was given a pair of shoes to put on 
his feet. I would a thousand times rather be under grace 
than under the law. 

Why, the law is a schoolmaster ; a cold, severe man that 
is continually holding a ratan over you. Well, some of us 
know what that means. You know what it is to see a ratan, 
and perhaps to feel it. Thou shalt do this, and thou shalt 
do that. That is the law, with a ratan at the back of it. 
But under grace the schoolmaster tries to rule the school 



1 64 GLAD TIDINGS. 

with kindness and love. He says if you love me do this, if 
you love me don't do that. The schoolmaster that I was 
taught by was a harsh, severe man. It was a word and a 
blow with him, and generally the blow came first. I knew 
what it was to have severity in my school days, and I also 
knew what it was to have kindness. After that stern 
school-teacher came a kind-hearted lady, who commenced 
to rule by love. Well, we thought we should have a 
grand time — do just as we pleased — didn't fear her. The 
first time that I broke a rule through, instead of seeing a 
rattan in her hand, I saw tears in her eyes. That was a good 
deal worse than a stick or a rawhide to me. She asked me 
to remain after school. And when we were alone she took 
me by the hand and talked to me in a low, kind voice with 
the tears in her eyes. If you love me, she said, keep my 
rules. I tell you I never broke a rule after that. Her 
kind words went straight to my heart. But take a further 
view of this difference between law and grace. Here is 
a boy in school, and the master's name is Mr. Law. He 
holds his cane over him and says, in a cold, severe tone, 
"thou shalt not do this, and thou shalt not do that." This 
went on for some time, and there was no love or affection 
between the boy and his teacher. But by and by the head 
master comes and takes the pupil out of that room and 
puts him in another class, the teacher of which is Mr. 
Grace. The boy, you see, can't be in both rooms at the 
same time — can't have both teachers at the same time. 
Now, we are not under law, but under grace, and all the 
Lord wants is to deal in grace, and bring us out from the 
curse of the law ; He wants to partake of love with every- 
one. Thank God, I am not under the law to-night, but 
under grace, and as I said last night, the Lord Jesus is 
trying to reach every man by grace. A friend of mine, the 
last time I was in England, told me this story — gave me 
this illustration of grace. Suppose, said he, that a man 



GRACE II 165 

had a beautiful farm on the side of the mountain. Every- 
thing was in an enclosure. He had a great wall all around 
it. Everything within the walls was bright and green, 
while everything outside was hot and dried up. One day 
there came a messenger to the man that had the beautiful 
farm, and he said to him : " Sir, you have a beautiful 
flourishing farm, but I want to make it better. I will in- 
crease its fertility ; I will make it a thousand times better 
than it now is." " No," says the farmer, " my farm is good 
enough ; you can do nothing to better it ; " and drove him 
away. He wouldn't have his farm made better, and he 
built his walls still higher to keep all men out. Up in the 
mountain near the house was a fountain. Its stream was 
used to irrigate and beautify the farm, and from it the crys- 
tal waters came to the garden. And the man that sent to 
him said to himself, " This man won't let me make his 
garden more beautiful ; he won't accept my kindness. I 
will build up a wall and cut the stream off." When the 
wall arose around the fountain's head the waters ceased to 
flow to the farm ; the flowers began to fade and wither, 
and soon everything presented the appearance of desolation 
and ruin. So the Lord of Glory comes and wants to give 
us His grace, but we spurn it, refuse to accept his blessing, 
and we perish. Why. Christ had the hardest work of his 
ministration to teach this subject even to his apostles. 
When they were offered grace they wouldn't have it. They 
couldn't keep grace in the country. They built up a wall 
of unbelief, the stream of grace ceased to flow to them, and 
what was the result? The garden that once was there is 
now the only dried up and withered spot on the whole 
mountain round about. Grace has flowed out to the Gen- 
tiles and to all the nations, and what a blessing it has been ! 
It was just because they built a wall of unbelief. That is 
just what the sinner is doing now. But if you'll only let the 
grace flow, nothing can hinder you from getting a blessing. 



1 66 GLAD TIDINGS. 

And now the question comes, How are we to become 
partakers of this grace ? In the 4th chapter of Hebrews, 
and 1 6th verse, we read ; " Let us come boldly to the throne 
of grace, and find grace and strength to help in time of 
need." God wants us to come and get all the grace we 
need. The reason why there are so many half starved 
Christians is because they don't come to the throne of 
grace. It is related of Alexander that he gave one of his 
generals, who had pleased him, permission to draw on his 
treasurer for any sum. When the draft came in the treas- 
urer was scared, and wouldn't pay it till he saw his master. 
And when the treasurer told him what he had done, Alex- 
ander said, " Don't you know that he has honored me and 
my kingdom by making a large draft ?" So we honor God 
by making a large draft on Him. If there is a drunkard 
here who wishes to get control of his appetite, all he has 
got to do is to come and get all the grace he needs. You 
can get enough to overcome every trial and sorrow. When 
Dr. Arnold was in this country — he is now in heaven — I 
heard him use in a sermon an illustration that impressed 
me. He said : " Haven't you ever been in a home where 
the family were at dinner, and haven't you seen the old 
family dog standing near and watching his master, and 
looking at every morsel of food as if he wished he had it ? 
If his master drops a crumb he at once licks it up and 
devours it, but if he should set the dish of roast beef down 
and say, ' Come come,' he wouldn't touch it — it's too much 
for him. So with God's children ■ they are willing to take 
a crumb, but refuse when God wants them to go for the 
platter." God wants you to come right to the throne of 
grace, and to come boldly. A while ago I learned from 
the Chicago papers that there had been a run on the banks 
there and many of them were broken. What a good thing 
it would be to get up a run on the Bank of Heaven ! What 
a glorious thing to get up a run on the throne of grace ! 



GRACE II 167 

God is able to help thee and deliver thee if you will only- 
come to him. That's what grace is for. I want you to 
turn to the 8th verse of the ninth chapter of II. Corinthians. 
I want you to mark that verse. If you have got your Bibles 
with you, draw a black mark right around that verse. Many 
want to know why Christians fail. It's because they don't 
come to God for grace. It's not because He hasn't got the 
ability. Men fail because they try to do too large a business 
on too small a capital. So with Christians ; but God has 
got grace enough and capital enough. What would you 
think of a man who had one million dollars in the bank and 
only drew out a penny a day ? That's you and I, and the sin- 
ner is blinder than we are. The throne of grace is establish- 
ed, and there we are to get all the grace we need. Sin is 
not so strong as the arm of God. He will help and deliver 
you if you will come and get the grace you need. 

Now, take all the afflictions that flesh is heir to, and all 
the troubles and trials of this life — no matter how numer- 
ous — and God has grace enough to carry you right through 
without a shadow. Some people borrow all the trouble 
they can from the past and the future, and then multiply it 
by 10, and get a big load, and go reeling and staggering 
under it. If you ask them to help any one else, they say 
they can't — they've got enough to do to take care of their 
own ; forgetting " Casting all your care on Him, for He 
careth for you. " A man was once travelling along a high- 
way, and he overtook one carrying a heavy burden on his 
back, and he asked-him to ride. But the man, after he got 
up, kept his bundle on, saying, " I am willing to carry it if 
I can only get a ride." So many are content to be nomi- 
nal Christians, and go along with great loads and burdens ? 
What is the throne of grace for but to help you carry your 
burden ? God says, " Come," and "As your day so shall your 
strength be." I suppose we all have thorns in the flesh. 
Instead of praying God to take the thorns out, let us pray 



1 68 GLAD TIDINGS. 

for grace to bear them. Let us live day by day, casting 
our care on God. In this fifth chapter of Romans there are 
these precious words — peace for the past, grace for the 
present, glory for the future. Some think that when they 
get to Calvary they have got all. They have just com- 
menced. By and by we shall see the King in His beauty. 
The glory is just beyond. 

A man said to me some time ago, " Moody, have you got 
grace to go to the stake as a martyr ?" " No, what do 
I want to go to the stake for?" A person said to me, 
"Moody, if God should take your son have you grace 
to bear it ?" I said, " What do I want grace for ? I don't 
want grace to bear that which has not been sent. If God 
should call upon me to part with my boy He would give me 
strength to bear it." What we want is grace for the pres- 
ent, to bear the trials and temptations for every day. " As 
thy day so shall thy strength be." The woman who had 
lost her husband went to Elisha with a story that would move 
the heart of Elisha or any one else. Her husband had died 
a bankrupt and they would sell her boys into slavery. She 
came to Elisha and told her story. He asked her what she 
had to pay. She replied a pot of oil. Elisha told her to 
go home, " borrow vessels not a few, take oil and pour into 
the empty vessels." Men in these times wouldn't believe 
in this. They would say, " What, take a pot of oil and 
pour into all these vessels — what good will that do ?" Not 
so this poor widow. She has faith and does as she is told. 
She goes to her neighbors and asks for vessels ; they can 
lend her a few. She takes all they have and goes on. She 
clears out the next house, and the next, and the next. " Bor- 
row," says the prophet, and she goes on until her house is 
filled with vessels. " Now close the doors," she says to her 
sons. And she pours oil into the first vessel and fills it full, 
and the next, and the next, and the next in the same way. She 
pours it in, and pours it in, and the boys run and get more 



GRACE II. 



169 



vessels, until the house is full of oil. Then she goes to Elisha 
and asks what she shall do. He tells her " go " sell the 
oil and pay the debt. Now, Christ pays the debt and gives 
us enough to live on besides. He doesn't merely pay our 
debt — He gives us enough to live on. He gives according 
to our need. " As thy day so shall thy strength be." Row- 
land Hill tells a story of a rich man and a poor man of his 
congregation. The rich man came to Mr. Hill with a sum 
of money which he wished to give to the poor man, and 
asked Mr. Hill to give it to him as he thought best, either 
all at once or in small amounts. Mr. Hill sent the poor 
man a five pound note with the indorsement — " More to fol- 
low." "Now, which do you think did the most good ?" Every 
few months came the remittance with the same message — 
" More to follow." Now, that's grace. " More to follow " 
— yes, thank God, there's more to follow. Oh, wondrous 
grace ! May the grace of God reach every heart in this as- 
semblage to-night is my earnest prayer. 



FAITH. 



I want to call your attention to-night to the subject of 
Faith. I think I hear some of you say : " That is a very 
dull subject ; if I had known that would be the subject I 
would not have come." But it is a very important subject. 
It is Faith that brings the blessing after all. Some one has 
said there are three things to Faith — knowledge, assent, 
laying hold. Knowledge ! A man may have a good deal 
of knowledge about Christ, but that does not save him. I 
suppose Noah's carpenters knew as much about the ark as 
Noah did, but tney perished miserably nevertheless, be- 
cause they were not in the ark. A good many men know 
a good deal about Christ, but they are not saved by it, 
and our knowledge about Christ does not help us if we do 
not act upon it. But knowledge is very important. Knowl- 
edge, assent, then, laying hold ; and it is that last clause 
that saves, that brings the soul and Christ together. The 
best definition I can find of faith is the dependence upon 
the veracity of another. The Bible definition in the nth 
chapter of Hebrews is, " Faith is the substance of things 
hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." In other 
words, faith says amen to everything that God says. Faith 
takes God. without any ifs. If God says it, Faith says I 
believe it ; Faith says amen to it. 

But now the question is, Who shall we have faith in ? A 
man got up in one of our young men's meetings the other 



FAITH. 



171 



night and wanted to know why it was there were so many 
that backslid. One reason for backsliding is because 
men are not sound in their faith ; it is because they have 
not really been converted to God. A good many men are 
converted to a church ; they say, " I like that church ; It 
is a beautiful church, and there is beautiful singing ; I like 
that quartet choir and the grand organ, and there is a good 
minister." And so they are converted to the church, and 
they are converted to the singing, and converted to the 
organ, and converted to the minister, or they are converted 
to the people who go there. They get into good society 
by going there. But that is not being born of God, or 
being converted to God. Once there was an old chap sat 
down among some army soldiers, who were telling stories 
of adventure, and one fellow got up and told all about how 
he had backslid, but the old soldier said, " I think there is 
some mistake, and the truth of the matter is that you have 
never yet slid forward." Now if a man has faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, he has got something he can anchor to, 
and the anchor will hold ; and when the hour of tempta- 
tion comes to him, and the hour of trial comes to him, the 
man will stand firm. If we are only converted to man and 
our faith is in man, we will certainly be disappointed. How 
very often we hear a man say. " There is a member of the 
church who cheated me out of five dollars, and I am not go- 
ing to have anything more to do with people who call them- 
selves Christians." But if the man had had faith in Jesus 
Christ, you do not suppose he would have had his faith 
shattered because some one cheated him out of five dollars, 
do you ? What we want is some one to have faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Turn to the prophecy of Jeremiah, 17th 
chapter, beginning with the 5th verse : " Thus said the Lord, 
Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his 
arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. Blessed is 
the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope the Lord 



172 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



is." But cursed is the man who puts his trust in man ; that is 
the reason why so many people are all the time being dis- 
appointed, and why there are so many that find their faith 
shaken. It is because they have been trusting in man, 
and man has failed them, and they have been trusting in 
themselves, and their hearts are deceitful and desperately 
wicked, and we cannot have trust in ourselves ; and be- 
cause man has failed us, or because we have failed our- 
selves, we think God will fail us. But if we put our trust 
in the God of Jacob, He will surely not fail us. 

Faith is very important. You talk about financial 
panic — if business men lost faith among themselves and in 
each other, how quickly all business would go to the wall ? 
It is the foundation of society. It is the foundation of 
everything. Some people think when we talk about faith 
in Christ that it must be some miraculous faith, and that 
they have got to wait until it comes down out of heaven ; 
that it is some shock which is to come upon them. But 
this faith in Christ is the same kind of faith that men have 
in one another. If a man has faith in the God of Jacob, 
God will never disappoint him. I never yet have seen a 
man whose faith God has disappointed in all my life. 
There are men who say it does not make any difference 
what a man believes, if he is in earnest, if he is sincere in 
his belief. We often hear people ask, " You do not think 
it makes any difference what kind of a belief a man has, if 
he is only sincere in it, do you ? " But, oh, my friends, I 
tell you, it makes all the difference in the world whether a 
man believes a truth or a lie. If the devil can you make 
you believe a lie, and that you are going to be saved be- 
cause you are sincere in your belief in it, that is all he 
wants. Do not suppose for a moment that it does not 
make any difference what you believe in or what your 
faith is, so you are only sincere. Do not go over to that 
terrible illusion which is one of the devil's lies. Once there 






FAITH. 173 

were a couple of men arranging a balloon ascension. They 
thought they had two ropes fastened to the car, but one of 
them only was fastened, and they unfastened that one rope, 
and the balloon started to go up. One of the men seized 
hold of the car, and the other seized hold of the rope. Up 
went the balloon, and the man who seized hold of the car 
went up with it, and was lost. The man who laid hold of 
the rope was just as sincere as the man who laid hold of 
the car. There was just as much reason to say that the 
man who laid hold of that would be saved because he was 
sincere as the man who believed in a lie because he is 
sincere in the belief. I like a man to be able to give a 
reason for the faith that is in him. Once I asked a man 
what he believed, and he said he believed what his church 
believed. I asked him what his church believed, and he 
said he supposed his church believed what he did, and 
that was all I could get out of him. And so men believe 
what other people believe, and what their church believes, 
without really knowing what their church and other people 
do believe. 

Now, we must know distinctly in whom we believe. 
Jesus Christ tells us to have faith in God, and if we have 
faith in God that it will carry us through all darkness, and 
storm, and affliction, and troubles, and trials. If our faith 
is in churches, and dogmas, and creeds, and men, and in 
this thing and that, we will come into trouble and difficul- 
ties before we get through our pilgrim's journey. But for 
him who has faith in God the light will shine brighter and 
brighter until he comes at last into the glory of the perfect 
day. Some people put their faith in a man. Some say, 
" There is such a minister ; I have confidence in him and 
in his Christianity." They pin their faith to a good man, 
and sometimes the good man deviates a little, and this 
friend who imitates him thinks that he need not be as per- 
fect as the elder. He says, " If he can do it I can do it," 



1 74 GLAD TIDINGS. 

and he deviates a little more, and a little more until he is 
at last very far away from the moorings. If a teacher 
teaches a child writing, he teaches him to imitate the copy 
as closely as he possibly can. Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob, and those heroic men that lived and moved as the 
heroes of olden times — there is a long line of them named 
in the nth chapter of Hebrews, but in the next chapter the 
writer takes the eye away from the contemplation of them 
and says, " Look at Jesus." You need not look at Abra- 
ham, or Isaac, or Jacob, but look unto Jesus, the author 
and the finisher of our faith ; look to Him alone. Let us 
learn a lesson that we are not to pin our faith to good men ; 
we are not to have supreme faith in them. They cannot 
save us. We are to have confidence in them, but when it 
comes to the great question of salvation, we are to have 
faith in God, and God alone. You are not even to obey 
good men ; we are to obey God, and Him only. If God 
tells us to do a thing we are to do it ; if He tells us to 
believe a thing, we are to believe it ; we are to have faith 
in God. Have faith in God, and if God tells you to believe 
a thing believe it, and then you will have peace and confi- 
dence and joy. Now we are to have faith. Christ says, 
" Have faith in God." 

But I hear a great many people saying, " How am I 
going to get this faith ? I would come to Christ, but I 
don't know how to get faith." It would take months and 
years to get that. Now, I was a long time getting faith. I 
was anxious to work for the Lord, but I wanted faith. I 
wanted to get faith, but I went about it the wrong way. I 
prayed for it, and did nothing else. That ain't the way to 
get faith to pray for it and neglect the word of God. The 
way to get faith is to know who God is, and I never knew 
a man or woman that was well acquainted with God that 
wanted faith. Some one said to a Scotch woman, " You 
are a woman of great faith." " No," she says, "lam a 



FAITH. I75 

woman of little faith, but I have got a great God.' Now 
would you just turn a moment to the 20th chapter of the 
Gospel of John and the 31st verse : " But these are written 
that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
God \ and that believing ye might have life through His 
name." Now, the whole Gospel of John was written for 
one purpose. John took up his pen and he wrote that 
Gospel that we might believe that Jesus Christ was the 
Son of God and that by believing we might have eternal 
life. And so, instead of praying for faith and mourning 
because we haven't got faith, let us study the Word of God 
and get acquainted with the God of Israel, and then we 
will have faith in Him. You can't find a man or woman 
that is acquainted with God, but that has strong faith in 
God. That is the reason those infidels won't trust Him, 
because they don't know Him. Now, turn to the 10th 
chapter of Romans, and the 17th verse: " So then faith 
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." — 
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God ! 
Now, sinner, do you want to be saved to-night ? Have 
faith in God ! Take Him at His word ! Believe what He 
says ! Believe the record God has given in His Son ! I 
can imagine some of you saying : " I want to, but I have 
not got the right kind of faith." What kind of faith do 
you want ? Now, the idea that you want a different kind 
of faith is all wrong. Use the faith you have got, just 
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, you can't 
give any reason for not believing. If a man told me he 
couldn't believe me, I should have a right to ask him why 
he couldn't believe me. I should have a right to ask him 
if I had ever broken my word with him, and if I had not 
broken my word with him, he ought to believe me. I 
would like to ask you, has God ever broke His word ? Can 
you come forward and tell me, our God has ever failed to 
keep His word ? Never. My friends He will keep His word. 



176 GLAD TIDINGS. 

I tell you, dear friends, it is the damning sin of the 
world to come through that one door and say there is a 
blight over the whole world, just because man don't 
believe. It is all unbelief that has brought misfortune 
among us. It is the sin of the world. We have sinned, 
not because we have murdered, not because we have sworn, 
not because we have lied. God condemns the world be- 
cause they believe not on Him ; that is the root of all 
evil. A man who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ won't 
murder, and lie, and do all these awful things. Don't get 
caught by that terrible delusion that unbelief is a misfor- 
tune. Unbelief is not a misfortune, but is the sin of the 
world. Christ found it on all sides of the .world. When 
He first got up from the grave, He found that His disci- 
ples doubted. He had reason to cry out against unbelief. 
There was Thomas doubted ; in fact all the rest of the dis- 
ciples, and it is what is keeping back God's blessing in the 
City of New York. I believe we would have a great 
revival here, and thousands of persons would be converted, 
if we only had faith in God. Now God is able to do great 
things if we only believe in Him. Let us have faith. 
Don't be looking to see if you have got the right kind of 
faith ; look and see if you have got the right kind of 
Christ. Now faith is just the hand that reaches out and 
gets the blessing. Faith sees a thing in God's hand. Faith 
says I will have it. I see that book in Mr. Dodge's hand, 
I go and take it ; I have got faith that he will let me have 
it. Now, my friends, have faith in God to-night. Faith is 
an outward look, not an inward look. A great many 
people are looking at their feelings, a great many people 
are looking down here. Don't be looking at your feelings, 
but look at Heaven, and if you have got the right kind of 
Christ you will have the right kind of faith. Suppose a 
man who had been in the habit of meeting a beggar on the 
street, and he might say, I have met this man for years out 






FAITH. 



177 



here begging and as I go up to-night I meet him, he has 
got a nice suit of clothes on, and I say to him, " Hullo, 
beggar," and he says, " Don't you call me a beggar, I am 
no beggar." " Why, are you not a beggar ? " " No, Sir, I 
am not a beggar." " What is the reason you are not a 
beggar? " "Why, I was sitting there to-day and I put out 
my hand and asked a man to give me something. Mr. Dodge 
came along and he put five thousand dollars right into my 
hand." " How do you know it is good money ? " "I took it 
to the bank." si How did you get it? " " I put my hand out 
and he just put it in my hand." " How do you know it is 
the right kind of a hand ? " " O, pooh, what do I care what 
kind of a hand it was." 

And so we have only to reach out the hand of faith to- 
night and take God's Son. The gift of God is his Son, 
and this Son is eternal life. Do you want it ? Take it. 
Who will have faith in Him to-night ? You must have a 
poor opinion of God if. you wont trust Him. I can im- 
agine some people saying, " O, we have a great respect 
for God, but we have not got faith in Him." How if your 
children should say, " O, we love papa so much, but we 
don't have faith in him ? " You smile at that, and yet how 
many Christians talk in that way. O, this miserable 
wretched unbelief ! What grounds have we got for not be- 
lieving God ? Let us ask God to-night to take us from it. 
Let us put our whole confidence in God, and let us trust 
Him now. If we don't believe Him, John says, we make 
him a liar, and that is what unbelief is. Many a man has 
been knocked down in the streets of New York for calling 
another a liar. Men take it as a great insult. It isn't very 
often that it is such a great insult. We very often tell that 
which is not true. When a man tells God He lies, is it 
true ? The devil said God was a liar, and men rather be- 
lieve him than believe God. God is truth. Let us trust 
Him with all our hearts. Now there is a verse here I 

12 



178 GLAD TIDINGS. 

would like to call attention to — a brother spoke of in the 
inquiry meeting to the inquirers — the 3d chapter of John, 
and the 33d verse : " He that hath received His testimony 
hath set to his seal that God is true." " He that hath re- 
ceived His testimony — ' His,' that is, God's testimony — 
hath set to his seal that God is true." In the old days 
men used to wear a ring, a signet ring, and instead of 
signing their names to a document they used to take that 
ring and sign that document, and so Christ uses that as an 
illustration. Now Christ says if you will set to your seal 
that God is true, He will believe it. You then set to your 
seal that God is true. Now, O lay hold of that verse to- 
night — " He that hath received His testimony hath set to 
his seal that God is true." Who will endorse Him ? Who 
will believe ? Faith says, I will. I will set to my seal that 
God is true. Isn't there some one here that won't set to 
his seal that God is true ? There will be joy in heaven to- 
night. Isn't there some one that will do it ? 

My little Willie I once told to jump off a high table 
and I would catch him. But he looked down and said, 
" Papa, I'se afraid." I again told him I'd catch him, and 
he looked down and said, "Papa, I'se afraid." You smile, 
but that's just the way with the unbeliever. He looks down 
and dare not trust the Lord. You say that would be blind 
faith, but I say it wouldn't. I told Willie to look at me 
and then jump, and he did it and was delighted. He 
wanted to jump again, and finally his faith became so great 
that he would have jumped when I was eight or ten feet 
away, and said, " Papa, I'se a comin'." I remember see- 
ing a man in Mobile putting little boys on the fence posts, 
and they jumped into his arms with perfect confidence. 
But there was one boy nine or ten years old who would 
not jump. I asked the man why it was, and he said the 
boy wasn't his. Ah, that's it. The boy wasn't his. He 
hadn't learned to trust him. But the other boys knew 



FAITH. I79 

him and could trust him. 0, sinner will you not learn 
Christ to-night and jump into the arms of a loving Saviour. 
He'll keep you. Who will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ 
to-night ? Who will come to Him and be saved. Will you 
not take God at His word. O, may He give you strength 
and faith to-night to trust Him as Job did. 



CONFESSING CHRIST. 



Last night I spoke to you about believing. I want to 
follow that subject to-night with another subject as im- 
portant, and that is Confession of Christ ; not confessing 
sin, that is not what I want to talk about to-night, but con- 
fessing Christ. In the ioth chapter of Romans, ioth verse 
— a very little verse — you wiU'nnd these words : " For with 
the heart man believeth unto righteousness ; and with the 
mouth confession is made unto salvation." I believe there 
are a great many people who have got into trouble and 
difficulty right in the middle of that verse, because they do 
not understand why it is that they do not have the joy 
they have heard other Christian people talk about. They 
say they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ ; they say they 
trust Him, and Him alone, for salvation ; they say that 
Christ is their only hope ; but there they stop. Now I say 
to you that confession is as important as faith. " With the 
heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth 
confession is made unto salvation." Then the next verse 
says, " For the Scripture sayeth, Whosoever believeth on 
Him shall not be ashamed." Now, if a man really believes 
in his heart, the next thing he ought to do is to confess 
Christ, is it not ? And you won't get the blessing until 
you do. " With the mouth confession is made unto sal- 
vation." The fact of the matter is that we are all moral 
cowards ; we are ashamed to come out and confess Christ 

180 



CONFESSING CHRIST. ^i 

and take our stand on the Lord's side, and on the side of 
His religion. It is the only religion in the world that is 
worth having ; it is the only religion in the world that 
gives life to man ; but, strange to say, I believe we are the 
only people on earth who are ashamed of their religion. 
You cannot find a man who holds any false doctrine of 
religion who is not proud of it. If a man has got hold of 
an error he is not ashamed to confess it and acknowledge 
it to all men. A man who is in the service of Satan is not 
ashamed of it. You hear such men swearing on the street, 
proclaiming who is their master every day; they^seem to 
be proud of the devil and to like to have everyone know 
that they are servants of his. 

But how do men confess their allegiance to Christ ? As 
disciples of Jesus what cowards we are ! It sometimes 
happens that those who have gone away from our meetings 
under the influence of a changed heart, come to me after- 
ward and say that they are still in darkness. I say to them, 
there is a reason for this ; did you confess Christ when you 
went home ? " No, I thought I would wait and see how 
it would hold out before I told anyone." But that is not 
the right way to do. You see it is with the heart man 
believeth, and the next step is to confess him with the 
mouth ; that is what the mouth is for — to confess Christ ; 
to tell all that he has done for you. If a man is ashamed 
to do this, to take his stand on the Lord's side, he will not 
get the benefit of his conviction. In fact, it is confession 
unto salvation ; salvation comes when we take our stand 
for Jesus Christ before all the world. If I belonged to the 
Republican party, and got tired and sick of it and wanted 
to join the Democratic party, I should not be ashamed to 
come out and acknowledge it. You never saw a man leave 
one party to join another who did not like to come out and 
let everyone know it. They want to use all the influence 
they can to get their friends to join them. If a man is on 



182 GLAD TIDINGS. 

the wrong side of this question of religion and goes over on 
the Lord's side, ought he not to be just as willing to 
publish it, and to make everyone know that he is on the 
Lord's side ? Isn't it amazing how few there are who are 
ready to come out boldly and acknowledge to everyone that 
they want to be on the Lord's side ? 

One thing that made our one o'clock meeting so interest- 
ing to-day was, a young man got up and said, " My sister 
and my mother are very anxious to have me become a 
Christian, and I myself want to." I said, "Thank God 
for that ; that man has more courage ; he is willing to let 
the world know that he wants to be on the Lord's side." 
I never yet have seen a man who came out boldly in that 
way but that he surely turns out all right at last. Look 
at the ninth chapter of Luke, the 23d verse : " And He 
said unto them all, If any man will come after Me, let him 
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me." 
But the cross is what men do not like ; they want to get to 
heaven without taking up the cross — any way but that. If 
men could buy salvation, they would be willing to pay a 
good price for it ; they would go round the world to get to 
heaven without the burden of the cross. The way 
to heaven is straight as an arrow ; it is perfectly straight. 
A man need not be in darkness about the way if he really 
wants to know. But on the way to heaven there is a cross, 
and if you try to go around it, or to step over it, or to do 
anything else than take it up and bear it onward, you get 
lost. When men are ready to follow Christ, to deny them- 
selves, and humble themselves, and take up the cross, then 
salvation is ready for them. Satan puts a straw across our 
path and magnifies it and makes us believe it is a moun- 
tain, but all the devil's mountains are mountains of smoke ; 
when you come up to them they are not there, but mere 
mountains of smoke. Now there is nothing to hinder this 
whole audience from coming out on the Lord's side to- 



CONFESSING CHRIST. 183 

night, and confessing Jesus Christ to be their Savior ; there 
is nothing but your will to prevent it. Satan has not the 
power to keep you from it if you will. Christ says, except 
a man become converted and like a little child he is not 
fit for the kingdom of God. Pride, I think, is the worst 
enemy we have. It keeps thousands of people out of the 
kingdom of God. The idea that we have to humble our- 
selves and become like a little child is too much for our 
pride, but, " whoever shall save his life shall lose it, and 
whoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it ; " but, 
" whoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My word, of him 
shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He shall come in 
His own glory and in His power, and amid all the 
angels." Ashamed of Him ! A young convert got up in 
one of our meetings and tried to preach ; he could not 
preach very well either, but he did the best he could — but 
some one stood up and said, " Young man you cannot 
preach; you ought to be ashamed of yourself." Said the 
young man, " So I am, but I am not ashamed of my Lord." 
That is right. Do not be ashamed of Christ — of the man 
that bought us with His own blood. Ought we to be 
ashamed to speak for His cause, to take our stand on His 
side ? He might well be ashamed of us, for ten thousand 
reasons which I could show. But the idea of a poor, 
miserable, vile, blind, hell-deserving sinner being ashamed 
to own Christ ! It is the strangest thing in the world. 
Look in the 12th chapter of Luke, the 8th and 9th verses : 
" Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before 
men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the 
angels of God. But he that denieth Me before men shall 
be denied before the angels of God." 

During our war, when a General had accomplished some 
great victory, or had any great success, he thought it was 
a great honor to have a man stand up in Congress and 
mention his name. But think of having your name men- 



1 84 GLAD TIDINGS. 

tioned in the Courts of Heaven, and not only that, but by 
the Prince of Heaven, by the King of Kings and Lord of 
Lords ! Think of Jesus speaking our names there ! He says 
to us, If you will not be ashamed of Me before men, in this 
old creation, I will not be ashamed of you in Heaven 
before the angels, in the new creation. You confess Me 
here, I will confess you there. You deny me here, I will 
deny you there. 

Will the Christian people in this room, in this assembly 
to-night, take their stand and let every one know in the 
circle of their family and among their acquaintances that 
they are on the Lord's side ? Why, if you do, it would be 
the best meeting, a meeting of more satisfaction than any 
we have had. The results of such a course taken by every 
one here to-night would bring more to Jesus, and be pro- 
ductive of greater righteousness than any brought out by 
any previous assembly. Let you, young converts, tell your 
experience, take your stand and confess Christ. That is 
the way to show how strong your conversion is. Be sure 
you are on the Lord's side, " If the Lord be God, then fol- 
low Him. But if Baal be God, then follow him." It is 
one of the surest signs of your genuine repentance to come 
out before men and confess the Lord Jesus Christ. Take 
your stand and be a witness to the Lord. " He that con- 
fesseth Me before men, the same will I also confess before 
the angels of Heaven. But he that denieth Me before 
men the same will I also deny before My Father which is 
in Heaven." I was in a Boston prayer-meeting a number 
of years ago — but I ought to say that I have lived for a 
number of years out West, a number of years in Chicago, and 
you know that that part of the country is made up princi- 
pally of young men ; at any rate the prayer-meetings were 
for the most part made up of young men — hardly saw a 
gray-headed man in them at all. So, while I was in Boston 
it was quite a treat to see old, gray-headed men in the as- 



CONFESSING CHRIST. ^5 

semblies. Well, in that meeting a little, tow-headed, Nor- 
wegian boy stood up. He could hardly speak a word of 
English plain, but he got up and came to the front. He 
trembled all over and the tears were all trickling down his 
cheeks, but he spoke out as well as he could and said : " If 
I tell the world about Jesus, then will He tell the Father 
about me." He then took his seat ; that was all he said, 
but I tell you that in those few words he said more than all 
of them, old and young, together. Those few words went 
straight down into the heart of every one present. " If I 
tell the world " — yes, that's what it means, to confess 
Christ. 

And now are there not hundreds here to-night that are 
really ashamed of Christ — feel backward about confessing 
that they are Christians ? I heard a story about two young 
men who came to this city from the country on a visit. 
They went to the same boarding-house to stay and took a 
room together. Well, when they came to go to bed each 
felt ashamed to go down on his knees before his com- 
panion first. So there they sat watching each other. 
In fact, to express the situation in one word, they were 
both cowards — yes, cowards ! But at last one of them 
mustered up a little courage, but with burning blushes, as 
if he was about to do something wrong and wicked, he 
sunk down on his knees to say his prayers. As soon as 
the second saw that he also knelt. And then, after they 
had said their prayers, each waited for the other to get up. 
When they did manage to get up one said to the other : 
" I really am glad to see that you knelt ; I was afraid of 
you." " Well," said the other, " and I was afraid of you." 
So it turned out that both were Christians, and yet they 
were afraid of each other. You smile at that, but how 
many times have you done the same thing — perhaps not 
in that way, but the same thing in effect. Henceforth, 
then, be not ashamed, but let every one know you are His. 



1 86 GLAD TIDINGS. 

And I wish to say to the young converts here to- 
night that if you want peace and joy flowing into your 
heart like a river, commence at once and confess Him. It 
is not a work of merit ; you are not making God a debtor 
to you ; it is the very least you can do. And those who 
do so, come out boldly and confess Him, preach better 
and stronger than any minister of His. Each confession 
is worth more than a sermon ; it is like to one raised from 
the dead. 

The most powerful meeting we have ever had was that 
of last night, when the converts came boldly forth and 
told how they had been saved. I heard many say that it 
was the best meeting they had attended. Oh, what meet- 
ings of sweetness and communion with God we would have 
if every one would just come out and do his duty as God 
wants him to do ! If we boldly took up our cross and bore 
it manfully, the world would soon see the influence of these 
meetings. When I was in Ireland I heard of a man who 
got great blessing from God. He was a business man — 
a landed proprietor. He had a large family, and a great 
many men to work for him taking care of his home. He 
came up to Dublin and there he found Christ. And he 
came boldly out and thought he would go home and con- 
fess Him. He thought that if Christ had redeemed him 
with His precious blood, the least he could do would be 
to confess Him, and tell about it sometimes. So he called 
his family together and his servants, and with tears running 
down his cheeks he poured out his soul to them, and told 
them what Christ had done for him. He took the Bible 
down from its resting-place and read a few verses of gospel. 
Then he went down on his knees to pray, and so greatly 
was the little gathering blessed that four or five out of 
that family were convicted of sin ; they forsook the ways 
of the world, and accepted Christ and eternal life. It was 
like unto the household of Cornelius, which experienced 



CONFESSING CHRIST. jgj 

the like working of the Holy Spirit. And that man and 
his family were not afraid to follow out their professions. 
They were not like a great many men I have seen who 
accept Christ while there is no cross to bear, and where 
everything is plain and easy for them. Some men when 
they profess to accept Christ, immediately think they must 
go and join some church right away. So they go down and 
see the minister, and say : " Mr. So and So, I have become 
a Christian, and I went to take a pew in your church. I 
would like to be a member of your congregation, but I don't 
want to take any active part in the church. Now, don't 
ask me some evening to get up and tell my experience ; I 
never did anything like that, and would not like to be point- 
ed at so conspicuously." Well, he does join the church, 
and that is the last you ever hear of him. Last week, in 
this building, a man was converted, and he went right off 
and joined some church. Well, I hope after he did join, 
he didn't stop going to church. If a man is converted I want 
him to come here and give his experience — let the thousands 
hear that he is a child of God ; let his testimony be given 
to others, and the result may be that God will use his 
witnessing to the conversion of many. Mr Sankey sang 
to-night, " Where are the Nine ? " So may Christ ask the 
question, " Where are the Nine ?" You have read of the 
story of the cleansing of the ten lepers — you know how 
the God of glory had compassion upon them. His com- 
mand was, " Go show yourself to the priests ; " and so 
they went — behold, the leprosy was all gone. It must 
have been a wonderful sight. They are going along the 
road ; all at once one discovers the great change that has 
been wrought in him, and he stops suddenly. " Brothers, 
my leprosy is gone," he cries : "I am perfectly well, look." 
And another then sees his altered condition, and he cries 
out, " And I am well, too." And another, " Why see ! 
my fingers were nearly rotted off, and now the disease is 



1 88 GLAD TIDINGS. 

all gone." So they all look at themselves and the great 
truth bursts upon them that they have been made well. 
Nine of them continue on their journey, but one poor man 
turns back, and falls at the feet of Jesus and glorifies God. 
Perhaps he did not find his Lord right away ; perhaps he 
had to search for Him ; but find Him he did, and gave 
Him the glory. Christ after seeing him alone at His feet 
out of all He had conferred the great- boon upon, asked in 
astonishment, " Were there not ten cleansed, but where 
are the nine ? " Well, I do know what became of them. 
Perhaps, they went and joined some church ; at any rate, 
that is the last we hear of them. So the people think that 
if they join some church that is all that is required of them. 
Ha ? my friends, " where art the nine ? " If the Lord has 
cleansed you, why don't you lift up your voice in His 
praise, and give thanks ? Why do you bury your talents ? 
Why don't you confess Christ ? It is sweet to Christ to 
have men confess Him. One day He said, " Whom do 
men say that I am ? " He wanted them to confess Him. But 
one said, " They say thou art Elias," and another " that 
thou art Jeremiah ; " and another — " Thou art St. John the 
Baptist." But He asked, " Whom do you say that I am?" 
— turning to His disciples. And Peter answers, " Thou 
art the Son of the living God. " Then our Lord exclaimed 
" Blessed art thou Simon Barjonas." Yes, He blessed him 
right there because he confessed Him to be the Son of 
God. He was hungry to get some one to confess Him. 
Then let every one take his stand on the side of the Lord ; 
confess Him here on earth, and He will confess you when 
you get to heaven. He will look around upon you with 
pride, because you stood up for Him here. If you want 
the blessing of heaven and the peace that passeth all 
understanding, you must be ready and willing to confess 
Him. Do you know how Peter fell? He fell like ten thou- 
sand people fall, because they don't confess the Son of 



CONFESSING CHRIST. 189 

God ; that is the way Peter fell. He saw the people 
standing all around and he was ashamed to own his Lord 
and Master. Am I speaking to any one here to-night who 
is ashamed to own Christ in his business : ashamed to 
own Him among his circle of acquaintances ? Have you 
been out to some dinner party the last week and heard 
these meetings ridiculed, and heard them scoff and jeer at 
Christ ? If you did, and did not confess Him and own 
Him then, how can you expect to be acknowledged before 
the throne at the judgment day ? If you are not willing to 
take your stand on the side of the Lord, you need not 
expect that he will bless you. I can imagine some one saying, 
"I don't believe in talking much about myself, and I 
don't." Well, I don't want you to confess yourselves ; I 
want you to confess Christ. We have had enough of that 
first kind of work. Confess Him ; that's what I want you 
to do. 

Look into that 5th chapter of Mark ; it is that man I 
spoke of the other night, how Christ cast out the legions 
of devils out of him, and how he prayed Him he might be 
with him. " No," He said, " you go home and tell your 
friends how the Lord had compassion on you. The young 
converts say : " Well, I will go around to the synagogue 
every Sunday, but I can't tell any one ; I won't say any- 
thing about it." But this man began to publish it, and it 
says that all men did marvel. They wouldn't have it that 
the Son of God did it. The man had never been to col- 
lege. I don't know as he could write his name ; I don't 
know as he had ever been to school. There was one thing 
he did know :' he knew the Son of God had healed him 
and had put a new song into his mouth. Christ says, " Go 
home and tell your friends what great things the Lord has 
done." Thus he had the highest eloquence ; he had the 
eloquence of heaven. The spirit of the Lord God was 
upon him. Yes, but some of these women say " If I was 



I9 o , GLAD TIDINGS. 

only a man, I would confess." Look into the 4th chapter 
of John. There was a woman that stirred up the whole 
town ; she took one draught of the living water and when 
she went to publish it, she says, " Come and see the man 
that told me everything I ever did ; is not this Christ ? " 
And then it says that many believed her testimony, and 
then they got Christ into town and He stayed there two or 
three days and many more believed on account of His 
own works. I wish we had a few more women like the 
woman of Samaria, willing to confess what the Lord Jesus 
Christ has done for our souls. 

Now, there is one man in the ninth chapter of John I 
want to call your attention to. I do not know his name ; 
I wish I did, because he is one of the men I want to see 
when I get to heaven. I would like to read the whole 
chapter, but it is so long. I will just read a few verses — 
in the ninth verse or eighth verse. It is that blind man 
that Christ gave sight to. Here is a whole chapter in 
John of forty-one verses, just to tell how the Lord blessed 
that blind beggar. It was put in this book, I think, just to 
bring out the confession of that man. " The neighbors, 
therefore, and they which before had seen him which was 
blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged. Some said 
this is he ; others said, he is like him ; but he said I am 
he." If it had been our case I think we would have kept 
still ; we would have said, " there is a storm brewing 
among the Pharisees, and they have said " If any man ac- 
knowledges Christ we will put him out of the Synagogue.' 
" Now I don't want to be put out of the Synagogue." I 
am afraid we would have said that ; that is the way with 
a good many of the young converts. What did the young 
convert here ? He said ; "lam he." And bear in mind 
he only told what he knew ; he knew the Man had given 
him his eyes. " Some said he is like him ; but he said, I 
am he." So, young converts, open your lips and tell what 



CONFESSING CHRIST- 191 

Christ has done for you. If you can't do more than that, 
open your lips and do that. " Therefore said they unto 
him, How were thine eyes opened ? He answered and 
said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed 
mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, 
and wash ; and I went and washed, and I received sight." 
He said, " I anointed my eyes with clay, and I went to 
the pool and washed, and whereas I had no eyes, I have 
now got two good eyes." Some skeptic might ask 
" What is the philosophy of it ? " But he couldn't tell that, 
" Then said they unto him, Where is he ? He said, I know 
not. They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime 
was blind. And it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made 
the clay and opened his eyes. Then again the Pharisees 
also asked him how he had received his sight. He said 
unto them I put clay upon mine eyes and I washed and do 
see." He wasn't afraid to tell his experience twice, he 
had just told it once. " Therefore said some of the Phari- 
sees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the 
Sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sin- 
ner do such miracles ? and there was a division among 
them." Now I am afraid if it had been us, we would have 
kept still and said "there is a storm brewing." "They 
say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of Him, 
that He hath opened thine eyes ? He said, He is a 
prophet." 

Now you see he has got to talking of the Master, and 
that is a grand good thing. I pity a man or woman that 
has got an idea that the world can't get along without him. 
This man, he began to talk of his Master. " He is a 
prophet ; that is what I think about him." He knew what 
he was coming to because the Pharisees had just said if 
any man confessed Him he was going to be cast out of the 
Synagogue. It wasn't like our churches nowadays, for if 
one church cast a man out, another will take him in if he 



192 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



shows any signs of repentance, but if he was cast out of the 
Synagogue there were none others to take him in, " And 
the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been 
blind and received his sight until they called the parents 
of him that had received his sight, and they asked them, 
saying Is this your son who ye say was born blind ? How, 
then, doth he now see ? His parents answered and said, 
We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. 
But by what means he now seeth we know not, or who 
hath opened his eyes we know not ; he is of age ; ask him ; 
he will speak for himself." I do not like those parents ; 
they did know ; they just dodged the question ; they were 
ashamed to confess. What a blessing they would have 
got if they had only confessed. " He is of age, ask him." 
They had rather sit in the synagogue than have Christ. 
" Then again called they the man that was blind and said 
unto him, give God the praise ; we know that this man is 
a sinner. He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner 
or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was 
blind, now I see." They couldn't beat that out of him. 
This young convert got assurance right away. " I know 
that whereas I was blind, now I see." I had a good deal 
rather know that one thing than have all the wisdom of the 
world and not have that. " Then said they unto him again, 
What did He do unto thee ? How opened He thine eyes ? 
He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did 
not hear ; wherefore would ye hear it again, will ye also be 
his disciples ?" He didn't even know Christ, but he is 
ready to preach for Him. Poor beggar ! Unlearned man ! 
If you are willing to be His disciple, I will tell it to you 
again ; will you do it ? I like the faith that young convert 
had. 

You do not know what you can do by kindness and 
forbearance. I remember a family in Chicago who used 
to hoot at me and my scholars as we passed their house 



COA T FESSING CHRIST. ^3 

sometimes. One day one of the boys came into the Sun- 
day school and made light of it. As he went away, I told 
him I was glad to see him there and hoped he would come 
again. He came and still made a noise, but I urged him 
to come the next time, and finally one day he said : " I 
wish you would pray for me, boys." That boy came to 
Christ. He went home and confessed his faith, and it 
wasn't long before that whole family had found the way 
into the Kingdom of God. O, let us confess Him to-night 
and not be ashamed of our religion. 

13 



COMPASSION OF CHRIST. 



I want to call your attention this evening to just one 
word — Compassion. Some time ago I took up the Con- 
cordance, and ran through the life of Christ to see what it 
was that moved Him to compassion, for we read often in 
His life, while He was down here, that He was moved 
with compassion. I was deeply pleased in my own soul, 
as I ran through His life and found those passages of 
Scripture that tell us what moved Him with compassion. 
In the 14th chapter of Matthew and 14th verse we find 
these words : " And Jesus went forth and saw a great mul- 
titude, and was moved with compassio7i toward them, and 
He healed their sick." He saw the great multitude and He 
was moved with compassion, and He healed their sick. 
And in another place it says that He healed all that had 
need of it. There didn't any one need to tell Him what 
was in the hearts of the people. When I stand before an 
audience like this, I cannot read your history, but He knew 
the history of each one. It says in one place in Scripture, 
" each heart knows its own bitterness," and when Christ 
stood before a multitude like this, He knew the particular 
bitterness in each heart ; He could read every man's biog- 
raphy ; He knew the whole story ; and, as he stood before 
that vast multitude the heart of the Son of God was moved 
with compassion, just as in the preceding verses we find 
Him, when John's disciples had come to Him with their sad 



COMPASSION OF CHRIST. 



195 



story, and with broken hearts. Their beloved master had 
just been beheaded by the wicked King ; they had just 
burried the headless body, and came to Jesus to tell all 
their sorrow to Him. It was the best thing they could do. 
No one could sympathize with them as Jesus could, no one 
had the same compassion with them that Jesus had. In 
all our troubles the best thing we can do is to follow in the 
footsteps of John's disciples, and tell it all to Him. He 
is a high-priest that can be touched with our infirmities. 
We find after this in a little while that He, too, had to fol- 
low in the footsteps of the disciples. He had to lay down 
His life for that nation, but He forgot all about that as He 
looked upon the multitude, and His heart was moved with 
compassion. He sought to do them good ; He sought to 
heal their sick. 

In Mark (1st chapter and 41st verse) there is a story 
that brings out the compassion of Christ. There came to 
Him a leper, and when He saw Him, His heart was moved 
with compassion. The poor leper was full of leprosy from 
head to foot ; he was rotten with leprosy. I can just im- 
agine how the leper told his whole story to Christ, and 
it was the very best thing he could do. He had no friends 
to be interested for him ; he might have had a wife and 
family, or a loved mother, but they could not be there to 
plead for him. The law forbid any one speaking to him 
or touching him, but undoubtedly some one had some day 
come out and lifted up his voice and told him that a great 
prophet had arisen in Israel, who could cure him of the 
leprosy — that he was quite sure that He could do it, 
because He had performed miracles equal to that, and that 
He could give him life if he would only ask Him. This 
leper told his sad story — let us bring that scene down to 
our own day. Suppose that any one in this assembly here 
to-night should find that he was a leper and the law 
required him to leave home. What a scene it must have 



196 GLAD TIDINGS. 

been when that poor leper left his home, left the wife of 
his bosom, left his own offspring, with the thought that he 
never was to see them again ! It was worse than death ; 
he had to go into a living sepulcher, to vanish from home, 
wife, from mother, father, children, friends, and live out- 
side of the walls of the city. Aud while he was out there, 
if any man should come near him he had to cry, " Unclean ! 
unclean ! unclean ! " He had to wear a certain kind of 
garment, so that all men should know him. You can see 
him outside of the walls of the city ! It might happen in 
the course of years that some one came out and shouted 
at the top of his voice, and told him that his little child 
was dying, but he could not go to see his dying child or 
comfort his wife in her affliction. There in exile he had to 
remain, banished from home while his body was rotting 
with that terrible disease, with no loved friends to care 
for him, nothing to do to occupy his time. That was the 
condition of the poor leper, and when he heard that Jesus 
could cure him, he went to Him and said, " Lord, if thou 
wilt Thou canst cure me ; Lord hear my pitiful story, Lord 
have mercy upon me ; Lord save me." And Jesus was 
moved with compassion, and He reached out His hand and 
touched him. The law forbade Him doing it — forbade 
any one touching him — but that great heart was moved, 
and He touched the man, and the moment He touched him 
the leprosy was gone ; he was healed that very moment. 
He went home and told his wife and family what a great 
blessing had come to him. 

Did you ever stop to think that the leprosy of sin is a 
thousand times worse than that Eastern leprosy ? All 
that it could do was to destroy the body. It might eat 
out the eye, it might eat off the hand, it might eat off the 
foot — but think of the leprosy of sin ! It brought angels 
from heaven, from the highest heights of glory down, not 
only into this world, but into the very pit of hell. Satan 



COMPASSION OF CHRIST. 197 

once lifted on high hallelujahs of heaven, but sin brought 
him out of heaven down into darkness. Look into the 
home of the drunkard : look into the home of the liber- 
tine ; look into the home of the harlot ; look into the 
homes of those who are living in sin ! The leprosy 
of sin is a thousand times worse than the Eastern 
leprosy of the body, but if the poor sinner, all polluted 
with sin, will come to Christ, and say as this leper did 
that we have just read about, " Lord, Thou canst have 
compassion upon me ; Thou canst take away this desire 
for sin ; if Thou wilt, Thou canst save me." He will save 
you to-night. Oh, sinner, you had better come to Him ; 
He is the very best friend that you have. It is Jesus that 
we preach here to-night, the Son of God. He has come to 
help you ; He stands in this assembly now. We cannot 
see Him with the bodily eye but we can with the eye of 
faith, and He will save every sinner who will come to Him 
to night? My dear friends, will you not come to Him 
and ask Him to have mercy and compassion upon you ? If 
I were an artist, I would like to paint that scene and bring 
out vividly that poor filthy leper coming to the Son of God, 
and the Son of God reaching out his hand and touching 
and cleansing him. 

And if I were an artist, I would like to draw another 
picture and hang it up on yonder wall, that you might see 
it : that is of the father that came to Christ with his belov- 
ed boy. He had been up on the mountain with Peter, 
James, and John, and there He met Elijah the Prophet 
and Moses the law-giver. Heaven and earth had come 
together, and there He had met His father and He had 
spoken to Him that memorable night on the mountain. In . 
the morning, when he came down, a crowd of people 
gathered round him, and some were laughing and talking ; 
they had been trying to cast the evil spirit out of this boy, 
and told his pitiful story. No one knows but a father how 



i 9 8 GLAD TIDINGS. 

much that man loved that boy, his heart was wrapped up in 
that child : but the boy was not only deaf and dumb, but 
he was possessed with a devil, and sometimes this devil 
would throw him into the fire and sometimes into the wa- 
ter ; and when the father came to Jesus, He said to him. 
" Bring him unto Me." And when he was coming, the devil 
cast him down to the ground. So every man on his way 
to Christ must first be cast down. There he lay foaming, 
wallowing, and Jesus only said, "How long has this 
been ? " " From his birth " was the answer : " Oh, you 
do not know how much I have suffered with this boy ! 
When a child he was grievously tormented ; he has broken 
my heart." Some of you here perhaps have children who 
are suffering from some terrible disease, and who are 
breaking your hearts — you can sympathize with that father. 
How that father wept when he brought that poor boy ! 
And when Jesus saw that pitiful scene His heart was 
moved with compassion, and with a word He cast out the 
devil. I can see the boy coming home with his father, 
leaping and singing and praying. Let us learn a lesson. 
Mother, father, have you got a son that the devil has taken 
possession of ? Bring him to Jesus. He delights to bless. 
All we have to do is to take him in the arms of our faith 
and bring him to Jesus. I want to call your attention to 
a difference between the father we read of in the 9th 
chapter of Mark and the poor leper in the 1st chapter. 
The leper says : " If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me 
whole." There was the "if" in the right place. The 
other said : "If Thou canst have compassion." He puts 
the if in the wrong place. The Lord said " If thou canst 
believe, all things are possible." Let us believe that the 
Son of God can save our sons and our daughters. Oh, 
have you got a poor drunken son? Have you a -poor 
brother who is a slave to strong drink ? Come ; bring 
him to the meeting here to-morrow night and let your cry 



COMPASSION OF CHRIST. I99 

be " Lord have compassion on my darling boy and save 
him." 

About Jesus there was a great number of disciples as 
He was going near the little city of Nain, and what met 
His eyes ? Why, there was a dead man carried out, and I 
cannot help but think of that passage. When I was 
preaching to the men last Sunday night, a poor man fell 
dead, and while we were preaching he was carried out. 
And here there was a dead man being carried out of the 
City of Nain, and there was a great number of his friends 
accompanying that widow to lay away her only child, her 
only son. He was her only son, it says, and his mother 
was a widow. The father, the head of the house, had 
died perhaps long before, and long before, that mother 
had watched over that husband, and at last she closed his 
eyes in death. It was a terrible blow, and now death had 
come again. You who are mothers can see how through 
all that sickness that mother was not willing to let the 
neighbors come in and watch over that baby. For weeks 
you can see a light burning in that little cottage in Nain. 
There is that mother, she is watching over that boy, her 
only son. How she loved him. You that are mothers 
can sympathize with her. You that are mothers can enter 
into full sympathy with her. You can see how hard it was 
to lose that only son. She will never look into that 
beautiful face again. She will never look into those 
beautiful eyes again. They have been closed ; she has 
closed them with her own loving hands. She has imprinted 
the last kiss upon that lovely cheek. Now they lay him upon 
the coffin, or upon the bier, and perhaps four men take 
him up just as they did the man with the palsy, and they 
bear him away to his resting place and there is a great 
multitude coming out of Nain. All Nain is moved. The 
widow was loved very much and there was a great multi- 
tude attending her. And now we see them as they are 



200 GLAD TIDINGS. 

coming out of the gate of the city. The disciples look, 
and they see a great crowd coming out of Nain, and the two 
crowds, the two great multitudes come together, and the 
Son of God looks upon that scene. We read often where 
He looked toward heaven and sighed. He had followers 
on His right hand, followers on His left hand, followers 
behind him, and followers before him. He saw the woe 
and suffering in this wretched world, but he looked upon 
that weeping mother. Death had got its captive. And 
shall not the Son of God look upon that widow. He saw 
those tears trickling down her cheeks, and the great heart 
of the Son of God was moved. He would not suffer that 
son to pass. He commanded the young men to rest the 
bier. " Young man, I say unto thee, arise ! " and the 
dead heard the voice of the Son of God and he arose. I 
can imagine him saying, " Blessed be God, I am alive." 

You know Christ never preached any funeral sermons. 
Here death had met its conqueror, and when he spoke 
the word, away went death. The Son of God was moved 
with compassion for that poor widow, and there isn't a 
poor widow in all New York, but that Christ sympathizes 
with her. You that are widows, mourning over loved ones, 
let me say to you Jesus is full of compassion. Let me say 
He is the same to night that he was eighteen hundred 
years ago when he bound up that poor widow's heart in 
Nain. He will comfort you, and to-night, if you will just 
come to Him, ask Him to bind up your wounded heart, ask 
Him to help you to bear this great affliction, the Son of 
God will do it. You will find that His arm is underneath 
you to help you carry the burden. There isn't a poor, 
suffering, crushed, bruised heart in all New York but that 
the Son of God is in sympathy with and He will have com- 
passion on you if you only come home to Him, and He 
will bind up that heart of yours. Yes, Jesus was moved 
with compassion when He saw that poor widow. They 



COMPASSION OF CHRIST. 201 

did not need to tell Him the story • He saw how the 
heart of the mother was broken and so He just spoke the 
word. He didn't take him with Him. He might have 
taken him along with Him to glorify Himself, but He gave 
him to the mother. He took him right out of the arms of 
death and handed him back to the mother. Yes, there was 
a happy home in Nain that night. How surprised the 
mother must have been ; she could hardly believe her 
eyes. Oh, my friends, Jesus has got the same power to- 
night, and He will bind up your aching hearts if you will 
only just come to Him. 

Did you ever hear of one coming to Christ that He did 
not accept ? He don't care what position in life you hold. 
No matter how low down you are ; no matter what your 
disposition has been ; you may be low in your thoughts, 
words, and actions ; you may be selfish ; your heart may be 
overflowing with corruption and wickedness ; yet Jesus 
will have compassion upon you. He will speak comforting 
words to you ; not treat you coldly or spurn you, as perhaps 
those of earth would, but will speak tender words, and 
words of love and affection and kindness. Just come at 
once. He is a faithful friend — a friend that sticketh closer 
than a brother. He is a brother born for adversity. Treat 
Him like a brother and like a friend and you will have a 
heavenly balm placed upon your wretched, broken heart. 
He is real ; He is tangible. We don't worship a myth ; we 
don't praise an unreal being. He is an everlasting, living 
person, a Man sitting at the right hand of God, full of the 
power and the majesty of Heaven. He comes here to- 
night in the spirit. He is present with you. Oh, accept 
Him, and he will deliver you and save you, and bless you. 
My friends, just treat him as if you saw Him here in person ; 
as if He stood here in person the same as I do now. Come 
to Him, then, with all your troubles, and He will bless you. 
If He were here, and you saw him beckoning unto you, 



202 GLAD TIDINGS. 

you would come, wouldn't you ? Well, you would be saved 
then by sight; but He wants us to take Him by faith. 
There are those here to-night that believe He is here now. 
Mr. Dodge, you came here for Christ's name, didn't you ? 
[Mr. Dodge, — "Yes."]' Isn't it Christ's name that has 
brought you here, Dr. Hepworth ? [Dr. Hepworth, — "Yes."] 
And you, Dr. Booth, didn't you come here in Christ's 
name? [Dr. Booth, — "Yes."] Yes, you have come here 
for Christ, and are ready to confess His name. You are 
witnesses to His name. Yes, here are two or three gather- 
ed together in the name of Christ, and he is here, because 
He has promised. Take Him at His word, then, my 
friends. The Son of God is here to-night. Do you doubt 
it ? Is there a man or woman in this assembly to-night 
that doubts it ? I tell you He is here. He is just here as 
much as if you saw Him. Press up to Him. He is infin- 
ite in compassion, and will take pity upon you. 

Oh, my friends, that was earthly compassion, but what 
conception can you form of the compassion of Jesus ; If 
you come and tell Him your sad stories His heart will be 
moved. Oh, come and tell Him your sins and misery. 
He knows what human nature is ; He knows what poor, 
weak, frail mortals we are, and how prone we are to sin. 
He will have compassion upon you • He will reach out 
His tender hand and touch you as He did the poor leper. 
You will know the touch of His loving hand — there is virtue 
and sympathy in it. That story of the soldier reminds me 
of another. A mother received a dispatch that her boy 
had been wounded. She resolved to go down to the front 
to see him. She knew that the nursing of the hospital 
would not be as tender as hers would be. After much 
solicitation she saw the doctor, and after repeated warnings 
from him not to touch the boy or to wake him up — be had 
only a few days to live at any rate, and waking him up 
would only hasten his death — she went to his bedside, 



COMPASSION OF CHRIST. 



203 



When she saw the poor boy lying there so still and lifeless, 
and with the marks of his suffering so fresh upon him, she 
could not resist the temptation to lay her hand on his brow. 
Instinct told him it was his mother's loving hand, and with- 
out opening his eyes he said, " Oh, mother, have you come ? " 
Let Jesus touch you to-night. His is a loving, tender hand, 
full of sympathy and compassion. Oh, my brother [look- 
ing at a young man in one of the front rows], will you have 
Him to-night ? You will ? Thank God, thank God, he 
says He will accept Him. We have been praying two or 
three days to this young man, and now he says he will take 
Christ. Oh, bless the Lord ! Let us pray, and as we 
pray, let us make room for Jesus in our hearts, as this man 
has done, upon whom He has had compassion, and whom 
He has saved. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 



We have for our subject to-nigbt one of the two young 
men we have read about in the 15 th of Luke. There is 
not a person in this audience here to-night but who is as 
well acquainted with the 15 th chapter of Luke as the 
preacher. Probably there is not a prodigal in all New 
York but that knows the story as contained in this chapter 
of Luke. It is not necessary for me to tell you why this 
young man went away. It was his nature. It is natural for 
a man to go away from God. " All we like sheep have 
gone astray ; " every one is turned too easily away. This 
prodigal went away without any reason that we know of ; 
we are not told that his father was unkind to him, but I 
think, however, that the father made a mistake. I think if 
I had a son that wanted me to divide up my property and 
let him have the share that was coming to him, I should 
make a great mistake to give him the money. A great 
many people are making that mistake to-day, and if there 
is one person in this world to be pitied more than another, 
it is the man who has all the money that he wants to spend 
and nothing to do. When that young man came to his 
father and wanted him to let him have his portion, his 
father had better have said, " No, you had better wait until 
your father has gone." When the prodigal son got that 
which was coming to him, it says he gathered his goods all 
together, and took his journey into a far country. Well, he 



204 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 



205 



was considered popular in that distant country — most men 
who have plenty of money and nothing to do are very pop- 
ular ; but how long his popularity lasted we are not told, be- 
cause we do not know just how long his money held out. 
But his friends gathered round him ; he had a good many 
friends until his money was gone, and then the poor man 
woke up to the fact that all those he called his friends had 
been after his money and not him ; they were friends to his 
money, not to him. And when he had spent all, at last he 
came to want. Did you ever stop to think how many prodi- 
gals there are in a city like New York ? Suppose that 
we had them all here to-night, and that we could bring 
them up here and let them pass in front of this audience, 
it would take a long, long time — tramp, tramp, tramp — be- 
fore this assembled audience. New York is full of prodi- 
gals. They have not only left their earthly parents, they 
have sent many of those parents to an untimely grave. And 
how many have turned their backs upon God and have 
wandered away ! 

I do not know where the prodigal son in this story went 
to, perhaps to Egypt ; perhaps he went to Memphis — that 
was one of the magnificent cities in those days — but he got 
as far away as he could from home. Perhaps he wanted 
to get away from home restraint and home influences ; 
perhaps he talked as many young men do now, in a laugh- 
ing way, saying he was only " sowing his wild oats." It 
makes my heart sad when I hear young men use that ex- 
pression. A great many young men seem to forget that 
they have to reap what they sow tenfold. If a man sows a 
handful, he reaps a bushel ; if a man sows the wind he 
reaps the whirlwind ; it is only a question of time ; he will 
surely come to want some day. All these earthly streams 
become dry some day ; he will surely come to want. We 
read that when this prodigal's money was all gone, a fam- 
ine struck that land and there he was alone, in a strange 



206 GLAD TIDINGS. 

country in great want. All his friends were gone now ; he 
had lost every one of them ; he thought he had a good 
many friends, but they were now all gone. If they had had 
pawnshops in those days, you would have seen him hang- 
ing round a pawnshop pawning what he had left. The 
rings he wore away from home are gone ; perhaps he has 
worn out his shoes and has not got them to pawn ; there he 
is stripped. But he did not go and beg, like a great many 
men in these days. For that one thing I have respect for 
the prodigal, because he did go to work. It was a very 
humble occupation to be sure, but if he could not get what 
he wanted he was willing to do most anything rather than 
to beg ; and there is no meaner occupation possible to a 
Jew than to feed swine, but he was willing to do that. If 
a great many of those people who are now called tramps 
would go to work we would all have sympathy for them. 

The prodigal got down very low, but he did not get 
down low enough to beg ; he went to work ; his work 
was very mean ; he could not have been in a meaner occu- 
pation than feeding those swine. When the backslider 
goes away from God he loses all the blessing of his work, 
and the prodigal lost all his. He had no home. A man 
who is away from God has got no home ; he has turned 
his back upon his home, and there was no home for him 
there among strangers. If the strangers had attempted to 
give him a home, it would not have been home to him, but 
they did not. There he was among strangers, coatless, 
shoeless, hatless ; some of the young men in that country 
came along, some of the very friends perhaps that had got 
his money away from him — for men gambled in those days 
as they do now — and they probably said, " Look at that 
fool ; he came down here with $20,000 only two or three 
years ago, and now it is all squandered." Those very men 
who had got his money away from him began to make 
sport of him now. I think I can see him straightening 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 207 

himself up and saying to them, "You call me a beggar ! 
Why, my father's servants dress better than you do ! " 
And they laughed and said, " Your father's servants — why, 
you have not got any father." No one believed him ; he 
had lost his testimony. And just so has every backslider 
from God lost his testimony. You never can get any food 
for the soul in the devil's country. There he was, away 
from home, starving, even the food the swine would eat — 
no one would give him even that. He would fain have 
filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat. Sin 
had taken him away from home, away from God ; the 
point is, how did he ever get back. 

I suppose you prodigals all want to know how he got 
back, and you want to know how to get back yourselves, 
hundreds of you here to-night. When the man began to 
come to himself he woke up to the fact that the best friend 
he had in the world was his father. There was one thing 
that the prodigal never lost ; he lost his work, he lost his 
food, his home, his testimony ; but he never lost his father's 
love. His father loved him right on through it all. I find 
that a good many men, who are living in sin, wonder 
why it is that God does not answer their prayers. Well, 
God loves them too much to answer their prayers. Sup- 
pose the son had written his father a letter, saying, " I 
am in want, suppose you send me some money." The 
father would have loved him too well to answer that prayer. 
Your Heavenly Father loves you too well. If you have gone 
off into a foreign country ; if you have got away from God's 
tables, His arms will not reach you there to feed and clothe 
you. He wants you to go home to Him. That man had 
left home and gone into a foreign land, and the famine was 
sore upon him. One day a neighbor came down from his 
native country perhaps, and found the young man there. 
Said he, " Why do you not go home ? " " Well, I don't 
know. I am not sure my father will receive me." " Youi 



208 GLAD TIDINGS. 

father — he loves you as much as he ever did." " My 
father — did you see him ? " Yes, I was talking with your 
father one day last week." " What did he say? " Does he 
ever speak of me ? " " Ever speak of you ! He never 
speaks of any one else. He dreams of you at night." Oh, 
if there is a poor prodigal here to-night, do not go on in 
that terrible delusion that your father has forgotten you. 
Here is a father that has nine children, and one is a prodi- 
gal away from home, but he thinks more of that one son 
than he does of all the rest. 

One of the greatest impediments a man has got is his 
terrible pride. This young man says, " I went away with 
abundance. I went away in grand style, and now I have got 
to go back in rags." Perhaps his pride kept him away for 
some time. One day he came to himself and made up his 
mind to return to his father's house. He got down on his 
knees and buried his face in his hands like Elijah upon 
Mount Carmel, and he began to think. He was busy think- 
ing, and he says, " Well I don't know but I had better go 
home. I think perhaps I had. In fact, there is no one in 
the world who loves me as much as my father," and he 
just lets his mind go back into the past ; it sweeps over his 
whole life ; it goes down into his childhood ; he remembers 
his father and mother — how they loved him, and how they 
watched over him. He thinks of the tears of his mother. 
I cannot help but think he had lost his mother — for there 
is no one who could be more interested in the boy than his 
mother, and it don't say anything about her. He thinks 
how after mother died, father was about as tender as 
mother. He says, " I remember the morning I left home, 
how the old man wept and sobbed over me. He tried to 
conceal his feelings, but I remember how he begged me 
to stay at home, and I remember how he prayed that 
morning around the family altar, how he asked the Lord 
God of heaven to save his boy from sin, and how he asked 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 



209 



that God might send His angels to watch over me." Every- 
thing was vivid in his mind, miles away, back in his native 
town. He says, " Here I am, shoeless, coatless, and just 
covered with these miserable rags." And he took a look 
out in the future and how dark it looked. 

" Why, the very servants are better off than I am ; there 
is bread enough and to spare in my father's house ; " and 
the young man came to himself, and he said, " I will." 
That is the time that his heart turned back to his God. I 
would to God we could get thousands to say that word to- 
night, I will arise and go to my Father.". Nine tenths of 
the battle was won when he said, " I will arise and go to 
my father." He may be in a far country, but he will soon 
get home if he has made up his mind to come. And he 
made up a sort of a sermon he was going to preach when 
he got home. The first thing he was going to do was to 
confess. " I will confess that I have sinned against heaven. 
I will confess that I have done wrong, and I will ask if he 
will let me be as one of his servants." 

Ah, he didn't know his father's heart ; if he had he 
wouldn't have asked the rest. He says, " I will just ask 
my father to let me be as one of his servants." But now 
he had made up his mind to go home, and he starts. He 
goes to the citizen of that country and he says, " I have 
made up my mind to go home, and I can't work for you 
any longer. My father is well off, and I am sure my fa- 
ther will receive me back." The citizen don't care any- 
thing about him, but there is a living heart there at home, 
and he starts. I see him on his way, and there is joy up 
there now ; they ring the bells of heaven. I see the guar- 
dian angel that watches oyer him, and the moment he came 
to himself then there was joy on high. Then the prodigal 
is out on his way — see him ! I can just imagine his feelings 
as he came over the border of his native land — " It may 
be father has died ; may be he is dead ? If he is, may be I 

14 



210 GLAD TIDINGS. 

may not get a warm welcome." It was a good thing for the 
prodigal that his father was alive, wasn't it ? He wouldn't 
have received a very warm welcome from that brother of 
his. Ah, young man, you had •better make the most of 
that experience and get home before that old father dies, 
unless you have got a godly, praying mother. Go down to 
your houses to-night and write a letter to your mother or 
your father and ask them to forgive you ! Ask your father 
in Heaven to forgive you. 

But now see him as he is going along toward home, 
wondering if that father is alive "waiting for him. There is 
the old man out on the flat roof. Many a time he has 
been there before. Many a time his eye has^been looking 
in the direction where his boy went. He cannot tell him 
by anything he has on ; but love is keen. He saw his boy 
afar off ; that was his long-lost boy. He starts out after 
him. You can see his long white hair floating through the 
air ; he leaps over the highway ; the spirit of youth has 
come upon him. The servants look at him leaping over 
the highway, and they wonder what has come over him. It 
is the only time God is represented as running, just to 
meet a poor sinner. God walks. When those children of 
Israel were thrust in that fiery furnace, we find that God 
walked in that furnace. The whole story of that prodigal 
is just written to bring out God's love, or the compassion 
of God. " And when he saw him a great way off he had 
compassion on him." He did not wait for him to come. 
He did not say, " He went away without cause, I will not 
go to meet him." And when he meets him, he falls upon 
his neck, and he weeps over him ; and the servants come 
running out to see what is the matter. And the boy begins 
to make his speech : " Father, I have sinned against Heav- 
en and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called 
thy son ! " And just as he was going to say, " make me as 
one of thy hired servants," the father interrupts him and 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 211 

he says to one servant, " Go bring the best robe and put 
it on him ■" and to another, " Go to my jewel-box and get 
a ring and put it on-his finger ; " and to another one, " Go 
and get the shoes ; " and to another, " Go and kill the 
fatted calf." And there was joy there. What joy there 
was in that home ! " He had compassion on him." 

My friend, don't you know that since then that story 
has been repeated nearly every day — prodigals going back 
— and I never yet heard of any man going back that did 
not get a warm welcome. There isn't a poor prodigal in 
New York but that if he will go back to his father, he will 
receive a warm welcome. But that isn't the lesson we want 
to teach. It is not only to be reconciled to your earthly 
father, but, my friends, to your Heavenly Father. The 
most reasonable thing you can do is to go to your Heav- 
enly Father, and ask His forgiveness. I have got a letter 
here, I think it is one of the last letters I received from 
England. The letter goes on to state that a son and hus- 
band had left his father's house — left his wife and children 
without a cause ; and now in closing up the letter the sis- 
ter says : " He need not fear reproach, only love awaits him 
at home." That man may be here to-night. My words 
may reach him, and if so I beg him to return from his er- 
ring ways. Listen, your sister says that no reproach or 
harsh words will meet you on your return home, only love 
will welcome you when you enter the door. Oh, do not 
spurn your sister's words, or the tears of the loved ones far 
away. The father of the Prodigal did not reproach his 
boy i did not have unwelcome words when he had returned 
from his wanderings. And so God does not reproach the 
sinner. He knows what human nature is — how liable a 
mortal is to go astray. It is human to err. He is always 
ready to forgive and take you back. Christ says He will 
forgive ; He is full of love and compassion and tenderness. 
If a poor sinner comes and confesses, God is willing and 



212 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ready to forgive you. He will forgive you the hour, yes, 
the minute, of your return. Oh, you that have gone astray, 
remember this. 

There was a lady that came down to Liverpool to see 
us privately • it was just before we were about to leave that 
city to go up to London to preach. With tears and sobs 
she told a very pitiful story. It was this : She said 'she had 
a boy nineteen years of age who had left her. She showed 
me his photograph, and asked me to put it in my pocket. 
" You stand before many and large assemblies, Mr. Moody. 
My boy may be in London, now. Oh,, look at the audi- 
ences to whom you will preach ; look earnestly. You may 
see my dear boy before you. If you do see him, tell him 
to come back to me. Oh, implore him to come to his sor- 
rowing mother, to his deserted home. He may be in trou- 
ble ; he may be suffering ; tell him for his loving mother 
that all is forgiven and forgotten, and he will find comfort 
and peace at home." On the back of this photograph she 
had written his full name and address ; she had noted his 
complexion, the color of his eyes and hair ; why he had left 
home, and the cause of his so doing. " When you preach, 
Mr. Moody, look for my poor boy," were the parting words 
of that mother. That young man may be in this hall to- 
night. If he is, I want to tell him that your mother loves 
you still. I will read out his name, and if any of you ever 
hear of that young man just tell him that his mother is 
waiting with a loving heart and a tender embrace for him. 
His name is Arthur P. Oxley, of Manchester, England. 
You who have got children around you and about you, and 
can feel the pangs that agitate the breasts of these families 
whose chief joys and delights are gone, lift up your hearts 
to God for this erring father, and for this wandering boy. 
If they be anywhere yet on the face of the earth, pray to 
God that He will turn their hearts and bring them back. 

Perhaps there is no subject in the Bible that takes hold 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 



213 



of me with as great force as this subject of the wandering 
sinner. It enters deeply into my own life. It comes right 
home into our own family. The first thing I remember 
was the death of my father. It was a beautiful day in June 
when he fell suddenly dead. The shock made such an 
impression on me, young as I was, that I shall never forget 
it. I remember nothing about the funeral, but his death 
has made a lasting impression upon me. The next thing 
that I remember was that my mother was taken very sick. 
And the next thing that occurred in our family that im- 
pressed itself on my young mind was that my eldest bro- 
ther, to whom my mother looked up to comfort her in her 
loneliness and in great affliction, became a wanderer — he 
left home. I need not tell you how that mother mourned 
for her boy — how she waited day by day and month by 
month for his return. I need not say how night after night 
she watched and wept and prayed. Many a time we were 
told to go to the post-office to see if a letter had not come 
from him. But we had to bring back the sorrowful words, 
" No letter, yet, mother." Many a time have I waked up 
and heard my mother pray : " Oh, God, bring back my boy !" 
Many a time did she lift her heart up to God in prayer for 
her boy. When the wintry gale would blow around the 
house, and the storm rage without the door, her dear face 
would wear a terribly anxious look, and she would utter 
in piteous tones, "Oh, my dear boy ; perhaps he is now on 
the ocean this fearful night. Oh, God preserve him ! " We 
would sit around the fireside on an evening and ask her to 
tell us about our father, and she would talk for hours 
about him. But if the mention of my eldest brother 
should chance to come in, then all would be hushed ; she 
never spoke of him but with tears. Many a time did she 
try to conceal them, but all would be in vain, and when 
Thanksgiving Day would come a chair used to be set for 
him. Our friends and neighbors gave him up, but our 



214 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



mother had faith that she would see him again. One day 
in the middle of Summer a stranger was seen approaching 
the house. He came up on the east piazza and looked 
upon my mother through the window. The man had a long 
beard, and when my mother first saw him she did not start 
or rise. But when she saw the great tears trickling down 
his cheeks she cried, " It's my boy, my dear, dear boy," and 
sprang to the window. But there the boy stood and said 
" Mother, I will never cross the threshold until you say 
you forgive me." Do you think he had to stay there long ? 
No, no. Her arms were soon around him, and she wept 
upon his shoulder, as did the father of the prodigal son. I 
heard of it while in a distant city, and what a thrill of joy 
shot through me. But what joy on earth can equal the joy 
in Heaven when a prodigal comes home ! This night your 
father wants you. Dear son, come to Him. Confess 
your sin, and He will have mercy upon you and forgive you. 
May Heaven's blessing rest upon every soul here is my 
prayer. Let us pray. 



NO ROOM FOR CHRIST. 



You will find my text this afternoon in the 2d chapter of 
the Gospel of Luke, a part of the 7 th verse : " And they 
laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the 
inn." For four thousand years the world had been looking 
for Christ. Prophets had been prophesying, and the mothers 
of Israel had been praying and hoping that they might be 
the mother of that child, and now He has arrived, we find 
that He is laid in a borrowed cradle. " There was no 
room for them in the inn." He might have come with all 
the grandeur and glory of the upper world. He might have 
been ushered into this world with ten thousand angels — 
yea, legions upon legions of angels might have come to 
herald His advent. He might have been born in a palace 
or a castle. He might have been born upon a throne if 
He had chosen to, but He just became poor for your sake 
and mine. He passed by mansions and thrones and do- 
minions, and went down into a manger. His cradle was 
not only borrowed, but almost everything that He had was 
borrowed ; it was a borrowed beast He rode into Je- 
rusalem on ; it was a borrowed grave they laid him in. 
When the Prince of Wales came to this country, what a 
welcome he received ; there wasn't anything too good for 
him. When the Prince of Russia came to this country I 
saw him as he was escorted up Broadway, and cheer upon 
cheer went up all the way. New York felt honored that 



216 GLAD TIDINGS. 

they had such a guest. The Prince of Wales during the 
past few months has been in India, and what a reception 
he has been receiving there ! Even those heathen are glad 
to do him honor. When the Prince of Heaven came down, 
what kind of a reception did He meet with ? There was 
no hallelujahs from the people ; He found that there was 
no room in Bethlehem for him ; there was no room in Je- 
rusalem for Him. When He arrived at Jerusalem, not on- 
ly the King but all Jerusalem was troubled. When the 
wise men told Herod, " He is King of the Jews, for we 
have seen His star in the East," not only the king upon 
the throne, but all Jerusalem was in trouble, and every 
man that had been looking for Him seemed to be troubled, 
and the whole city is excited. The king sends out and 
commands all infants under a certain age to be slain. No 
sooner the news comes that He is born than the sword is 
unsheathed, and follows Him you may say to Calvary. 

And has the world grown better ? Is not this world 
about like that little town in Bethlehem — there is no room 
for Him ? What nation wants Him to-day ? Does this 
nation want him ? Suppose you should put it to a popular 
vote, I don't believe there is a town in the whole Republic 
that would vote for Him. Does England want Him ? 
England and the United States are perhaps the most 
Christianize^ countries on the globe, but I don't believe 
there is a town in England or in this country that would 
vote for Him. In fact I might say, does the Church of 
God want Him ? We have got the forms, we are satisfied 
with them, but we deny the power. I am > ashamed to say 
that there are many of our churches that really would not 
want him. There would be a different state of things in 
the Church of God to-day if Christ should come. A great 
many church members do not want Him ; they say, " My 
life is not right." There are very few families in the whole 
City of New York that would make room for Him. They 



NO ROOM FOR CHRIST. 2 r 7 

would make room for the greatest drunkard in New 
York, rather than make room for Him. Don't think 
the world is better if it don't make room for Him. 
If He should go to Washington do you think they would 
make room for Him there ? If a man should get up in 
Congress and say, " Thus saith the Lord," they would hoot 
him out ; if Christ should go there they would say, " He is 
too good, he is too honest, we don't want Him, we don't 
want honest men." When it comes to a real personal God 
the world don't want Him, the nations of the earth don't 
want Him. Does France want Him ? Does Italy want 
Him ? O, my friends, there is no room for Christ, yet it 
would be a glorious day if there was room for Him. I be- 
lieve the millenium would soon be here. When He went 
to Decapolis He found a man there filled with devils and He 
cast out those devils, and the men of Decapolis came out and 
besought Him to go out of their coasts. Take what you call 
the fashionable society of New York, is He wanted there ? 
They will talk about this church and that church, they will 
talk about Dr. So-and-So, and the Rev. So-and-So, and 
talk about the Bible in schools, but when it comes to a 
real personal Christ and you ask them, " Do you want 
Christ in your heart ? " they say, " O, Sir, that is out of 
taste." I pity the man or woman that talks in that way. 
Is He wanted in commerce ? Is He wanted on 'Change ? 
If He was, men would have to keep their books different. 
Commercial men don't want Him. 

You may ask the question, " Well,where is He wanted ; 
who wants Him ? Where is there room for the Son of God ; 
who will make room for Him." I wonder if there is any- 
one here that ever had that feeling for five minutes. I 
think I have had that feeling for a day. There are some 
who wonder how people can commit suicide. It's no won- 
der to me. When men feel that there is no room for them, 
that no one wants them, when they feel that they are a 



218 GLAD TIDINGS. 

burden to their friends, and a burden to themselves, why it 
drives them mad. I remember one day when I felt as if 
no one wanted me. I felt as if there was no room for me. 
For about twenty-four hours I had that awful feeling that 
no one wanted me. It seems to me as if that must have 
been the feeling of Christ. His neighbors didn't want 
Him ; those Nazarenes didn't want Him • they would have 
taken Him to the brow of the hill and dashed Him to the 
bottom ; they would have torn Him limb from limb if they 
could. He went into Capernaum, they didn't want Him 
there. Jerusalem didn't want Him, there was no room. 
To me, there is one of the most touching verses in the 
Bible, in the closing part of the 7th chapter of John. I 
believe it is the only place where Christ was left alone : 
" Every man went to his own house, and Jesus went to the 
Mount of Olives." I have often thought I would like to 
have met Him upon that Mount. He was on the Mount 
alone. There was no home for Him in Jerusalem ; He was 
looked upon as a blasphemer j some thought He was pos- 
sessed of devils ; and so He was left alone. You could 
have seen Him under an olive tree alone, and I imagine 
that night you could have heard Him crying to God for 
His own. And perhaps it was on that memorable occa- 
sion or a similar occasion when He said, " The foxes have 
holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of 
Man hath not whereon to lay His head." Thanks be to 
God there was a place. I have often thought of that little 
home at Bethany. It says that Martha received Him into 
her house. It was the best thing that Martha ever did ; 
and do you think she ever regretted it ? Little did she 
know that her loved brother was soon going to die 
when she made room for Jesus. Ah, it was the best thing 
that Martha and Mary ever did when they received the 
village carpenter, the despised Nazarene, into their home. 



NO ROOM FOR CHRIST. 219 

He used to have to walk down to the city two miles to 
Bethany, but there He always found room. 

But look again, look in that home where Lazarus comes 
home sick. Some think his occupation was that of a 
scribe, that he was a writer, and one day he came home 
weary ; perhaps he had headache, and fever seized him. 
One of the leading physicians of Jerusalem is sent for, 
and the third or fourth day he tells the sisters, " There 
is no hope for your brother, he is dying, he cannot live." 
And when all earthly hope had failed, and they had given 
up, then the sisters sent for Jesus. Those two sisters sent 
a messenger, perhaps one of the neighbors, off from Beth- 
any \ perhaps he would have to go twenty or thirty miles 
away, on the other side of Jordan, for they heard that 
Jesus was there. They did not have papers in those days 
to tell them where He was, and if there had been papers 
they wouldn't have reported His meetings. There 
wouldn't have been a paper that would have taken 
the pains to report his meetings. They instructed the 
messenger to say, " Him whom Thou lovest is sick." 
That was enough. What a title to have to a man's name ? 
— -what a eulogy to have to a name. And when the mes- 
senger came and told the message, he told Him that him 
whom He loved was very sick ; and the Lord Jesus turned 
to him and said, " I will go. Take back word to those 
two sisters. The sickness is not unto death, but I will 
come." And I can see those two sisters. How eager they 
are to find out what his success had been. " What did He 
say ? " and the messenger answers, " Why, He said the 
sickness was not unto death? and He would come and see 
Lazarus. I can imagine Mary turns to the messenger and 
says, " I don't understand that. If He were a prophet He 
would certainly have known that Lazarus is dead, for he 
was dying when you went away, and he was already dead 
when He said the sickness is not unto death. Are you sure 



220 GLAD TIDINGS. 

He said that ? " " Yes, that was what He said." It might 
have been the second day after his death and He didn't 
come. And they watch and wait, and the third day they 
look for Him. " Why, it is so strange He treats us in this 
way." The fourth day comes, and it is noon, yet He has 
not come. I can imagine that on the fourth day in the 
afternoon they receive word that Jesus is just outside of 
the walls of Bethany with His disciples, and when He 
comes Martha says to Him, " If thou hadst been here my 
brother had not died," and hear what gracious words fall 
from the lips of Jesus, " Thy brother shall live again." 
Martha said unto Him, "I know that He shall rise again in 
the resurrection at the last day." Hear the blissful words 
that fall from the lips of the Son of God : " I am the resur- 
rection and the life ; he that believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and 
believeth in me shall never die." Little did Martha think 
that He whom she was entertaining was the Resurrection 
and the Life, and what a privilege it was to have such a 
guest ! And Christ says, "Where is Mary ? Go call her." 
So Martha goes and calls Mary, and says, " Mary, the 
Master is come, and calleth for thee." Isn't there some 
Mary to-day whom He is calling for ? Isn't there some un- 
saved Mary within these walls whom He is calling for? If 
there is, He wants to bind up your heart — He wants to 
take away your sin. 

And when Mary comes she meets Him with the very 
same words that fell from the lips of Martha, u If thou 
hadst been here my brother had not died ? '' and Christ 
says, " Where have ye laid him ? " And now look at Him. 
Those two sisters are standing near Him, and perhaps are 
telling Him of the last moments of Lazarus and how their 
hearts had been bleeding all these four days. And when 
He saw them weeping, and the Jews also weeping who came 
with them, the heart of the Son of God was moved with 



NO ROOM FOR CHRIST. 221 

compassion and "Jesus wept" For it says, "He wept 
with them that wept," and the tears were streaming down 
His cheeks. " Then," said the Jews, " Behold how He loved 
him." And when Jesus came to the grave He said, "Take 
ye away the stone." But Martha says, " He has been dead 
four days, and by this time it is not proper to go near him." 
But He commanded them to take away the stone. " Then 
they took away the stone from the place where the dead 
was laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, " Father, 
I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. And I knew 
Thou nearest Me always : but because of the people which 
stand by I said it that they may believe that Thou hast 
sent Me." And when He had thus spoken, He cried with 
a loud voice, " Lazarus come forth." Some one has said, 
it was a good thing he called him byname, for if He hadn't 
all the dead men in that yard would have leaped up. " And 
he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with 
grave-clothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin. 
Jesus saith unto them, ' Loose him and let him go.' " 

In the little town of Bethany now the sun is just sink- 
ing behind one of those Palestine hills, and it is now about 
dusk. You can see the Son of God perhaps, with Lazarus 
hold of His arm, and they walk through the street. Ah, 
that was the happiest home on earth that night. I believe 
there was no happier home than that in Bethany that night. 
Isn't it the very best thing that you can do to make room 
for Him ? 

Mothers, if you will make room for Him, you will en- 
tertain the best guest, the best stranger you ever enter- 
tained. Ah, Martha didn't know how near death was to 
that home when she received Christ, and, dear friends, you 
don't know how near death may be to you, and when death 
comes what a comfort it is to have Christ to help us, to have 
His arms underneath us and bear us up. You need Him, 
and had better make room for Him, and if you make room 



222 GLAD TIDINGS. 

for Him here in your hearts, He will make room for you, 
up there. He says in that chapter which I read : " Let not 
your heart be troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also in 
Me. In My father's house are many mansions ; if it were 
not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for 
you." Instead of His disciples comforting Christ, there is 
Christ trying to comfort them. And now, while He is up 
yonder preparing a place for us, shall we not make room 
for Him down here ? If the nations won't make room for 
Him, if the Church won't make room for Him, if the fam- 
ilies won't make room for Him, thanks be to God, we can 
make room for Him in our hearts. He says you are the 
temples of the Holy Ghost. " Know ye not that your body 
is the temple of the Holy Ghost." Will you make room 
for Him this afternoon ? Young lady, is there room for 
self ? Is there room for the world ? Is there room for 
pride ? Is there room for jealousy ? Is there room for 
every one and everything else but the Son of God? Will 
you turn Him away, or will you to-day make room for Him ? 
Isn't it the very best thing you can do to make room for 
Christ ? When He made this world, He made room for 
us, plenty of it. He made room for Himself in our hearts? 
but a usurper has come. My friends, won't you let the Son 
of God into your hearts, and won't you let Him dwell with 
you ? The only room the world found for Him was just on 
the Cross. Now suppose He were to come here, shall He 
come into this hall, and shall He go through this Assembly, 
and shall He not find room in your hearts and mine, or will 
your heart be full like that full inn, in Bethlehem, or will you 
this afternoon, just while I am speaking, say, " Lord Jesus, 
I make room for you in my heart. Mother, ought not grati- 
tude for Him who has made a place for your loved ones in 
heaven lead you to make room for Him ? Won't you say, 
" There is plenty of love, won't you come and dwell in my 
heart." Just the very minute you receive Him He will come. 



NO ROOM FOR CHRIST. 223 

Am I speaking this afternoon to some poor fallen woman ? 
Let me say to you, He received just such, and to-day He will 
come into your heart if you will just make room for Him. 
How many are there in this audience to-day that never have 
thanked the Lord Jesus for the blessings He has showered 
upon them ! And, my friend, don't let this beautiful Sab- 
bath pass without saying, " Jesus, there shall be room in my 
heart for Thee hereafter," and then by-and-by He will re- 
ceive you up yonder. If you will make room for Him here 
in your heart, you may be sure H e will make room for you 
in one of His Father's mansions. O this day and this hour, 
my friends, make room for Christ ! Dear friends, don't you 
want Him ? To-day, won't you make room for Him ? 
Won't you just bow your heads, and, when you pray, pray 
that every soul that wants Christ may come to Him. 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 



I wonder how many of these people here this afternoon 
would like to be saved ? I am not going to ask those who 
would to rise. I do not know whether anyone would have 
courage enough to rise, and by that act say, " I would like 
to be saved. Perhaps you say to yourselves, " If that man 
will just tell me the way how I can be saved this after- 
noon, I will be saved." I believe one reason why so few 
are saved, is because they do not come out to the meetings 
expecting to be saved. They do not come for that pur- 
pose. There was a lady came to our meeting in Philadel- 
phia — to the noon meeting at eleven o'clock ; she came 
early so as to get a good seat. After the meeting was 
over we had another meeting for women, and she stayed 
at that. In the afternoon we had another meeting and she 
stayed at that. She had made up her mind not to leave 
the meetings until she had found Christ. She did not find 
Him at that meeting, but she might have found Him. He^ 
was offered freely to ever one at all of them. So she stayed 
at the afternoon meeting, and still no light came. She 
stayed at the evening meeting and went into the inquiry 
meeting afterward. Between eleven and twelve o'clock 
she took me by the hand and said, " I will trust Him." 
And she rejoiced in the Saviour's love. I met her after- 
ward. There was not a face shone more than hers did. 
There was a woman who came determined to find Him. 



HO W TO BE' SA VED. 



225 



When we search for God with all our hearts we are sure to 
find Him. 

I am not going to preach so much of a sermon to-day, as 
I am going to try to tell you the Way of Life. I had a long 
talk with a man yesterday who I really believe was honestly 
seeking the Kingdom of God ; but the trouble was, he was 
determined to try to seek Him in his own way, and trying 
to work the thing out himself, instead of just trusting to 
Jesus for it. I hope he is here to-night, and that the Lord 
may bless this little talk to his soul, and that he may to- 
night sleep safely in the arms of Jesus Christ. It is 
supremely important to every soul here this day to trust 
in Christ and be saved. I am going to take up a few 
Scriptural illustrations. The first is the ark. W 7 hen I was 
in Manchester, in one of the inquiry meetings, I went up 
into the gallery to talk with a few men who were standing 
together, and who were inquirers of the Way of Life. And 
while they were standing in a little group around me there 
came up another man and got on the outside of the 
audience, and I thought by the expression of his face that 
he was skeptical. I did not think he had come to find 
Christ. But as I went on talking I noticed the tears 
trickling down his cheeks. I said, " My friend, are you 
anxious about your soul's salvation ? " He said " Yes, 
very." I asked him what was the trouble, and I kept on 
talking to that one man, thinking that if he could under- 
stand me perhaps the others would. He said he wanted 
to feel right about it. I explained it to him by means of 
an illustration, and asked him, " Do you see it ? " He 
said " No." I used another, and asked him, " Do you see 
it yet ? " and he said " No " again. I gave still another 
and still he said he did not see. I then said, "Was it 
Noah's feelings that saved him, or was it his ark ? Was 
what saved Noah his righteousness ? was it his life, was it 
his prayers, was it his tears, was it his feelings, or was it 

1? 



226 GLAD TIDINGS. 

the ark ? " He came immediately and grasped me by the 
hand, and said, " I see it now ; it is all right now ; I've 
got to go away on the next train, and I'm in a hurry, but 
you have made it plain to me ; good-bye." And he went 
off. I thought it was so sudden that he could not have 
understood it. But the next Sunday afternoon he came and 
tapped me on the shoulder and smiled, and asked me if I 
remembered him. I said no, that I remembered his face, 
but could not tell who he was or where I'd seen him be- 
fore. He said, " Do you remember a man that came up 
into the inquiry-room the other day, and you explained to 
him how it was Noah's ark that saved him ? I did not see 
any illustration until you used that one, and then I saw it 
all." I asked him how he was, and he said he had 
been all right ever since, and that the ark had saved him. 
I afterward learned that he was one of the best business 
men of Manchester. His feelings did not save him. The 
ark saved him. 

I want to prove to you that salvation is instantaneous. 
It is just as sudden as a man walking through a door-way. 
One minute he is on this side, the next he is on that side. 
There was one minute when Noah was exposed to the 
wrath that was to come over the whole world ; but when 
he went through the door- way of the ark, that moment he 
was safe. There are many who are trying to make an ark 
for themselves out of their feelings, out of their own good 
deeds. But God has provided an ark. If Noah had had 
to build himself an ark when the flood came, he would have 
been lost like the rest. A good many of those men who 
perished when that flood came tried to make arks for them- 
selves, but they all perished helplessly. They tried to 
make boats and rafts, and tried every way they could to 
save themselves, but they perished because they were not 
in the ark that God had appointed. So, to-day, every man 
and every woman must perish that is not in the ark which 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 



227 



God has appointed for their salvation. A knowledge about 
the ark is not going to help you. A great many persons 
flatter themselves they are going to be saved because 
they know a great deal about Jesus Christ. But your 
knowledge of Him will not save you. Noah's carpenters 
probably knew as much about the ark as Noah did, and 
perhaps more. They knew that the ark was strong. They 
knew it was built to stand the Deluge. They knew it was 
made to float upon the waters. They had helped to build 
it. But they were just as helpless when the flood came as 
men who lived thousands of miles away. Men who lived 
right in sight of the ark, that knew all about it, perished 
like the rest, because they were not in the ark. I know 
something about the different lines of steamers, and I have 
crossed the Atlantic. Here is another man that has never 
heard there was such a line of steamers. We both want 
to go to Europe. My knowledge of a line of steamers 
does not help me a bit if I do not take the means to go 
there. You many hear about Christ, but if you do not be- 
lieve in Christ you cannot be saved. Your knowledge is 
not going to help you to your salvation. What you want 
to do is just to make Christ your ark, and then to step into 
that ark and be saved. 

I can imagine you saying, " I do not see how a person 
can be saved all at once." So many persons think they 
have to work themselves out gradually, that they have to do 
a little here, a little there, and after they have toiled and 
worked and have considered the matter prayerfully for some 
time, they will be more acceptable. The Israelites were 
told to sprinkle blood upon the door-posts, that the angel 
of death might not enter the houses where the blood was to 
be seen. There was one moment when they had not 
sprinkled the blood on their door-posts, and when they 
were exposed to the blight of the destroying angel ; 
and there was another moment when the blood had been 



228 GLAD TIDINGS. 

sprinkled there, and they were safe. There is a legend 
told about this which illustrates it very well. It is about a 
little girl who was the first-born, and consequently who 
would have been a victim on that night if the protecting 
blood were not sprinkled on the door-posts of her father's 
house. The order was that the first-born was to be struck 
by death all through Egypt. This little girl was sick, and 
she knew that death would take her, and she might be a 
victim of the order. She asked her father if the blood was 
sprinkled on the door-posts. He said it was, that he had 
ordered it to be done. She asked him if he had seen it 
there. He said no, but he had no doubt that it was done. 
He had seen the lamb killed, and had told a servant to at- 
tend to it. But she was not satisfied, and asked her father 
to go and see, and urged him to take her in his arms and 
carry her to the door to see. They found that the servant 
had neglected to put the blood upon the posts. There the 
child was exposed until they found the blood and put 
it upon the door-posts, and when she saw it she was satis- 
fied. That was all the assurance that she needed. So a 
great many are saying, " Do you feel this and that ? Do 
you feel, do you feel, do you feel ? " God does not tell you 
to feel. He tells you to believe. He says, " When I see 
the blood I will pass over," and if you are sheltered behind 
the blood you are perfectly safe and secure. Suppose I say 
to a man, " Do you feel that you own this piece of land ? " 
He looks at me a moment and thinks I must be crazy. 
He says " Feel ? Why feeling has nothing to do with it. I 
look at the title. That is all I want." So you see, all you 
have to do is with the title. A great many are all the time 
saying : " Do you feel that you are safe ? " But to all God 
says, " He that believeth in the Lord hath everlasting life." 
Not "will have," it is the present tense, hath it to-day, 
hath it this very hour. If the devil can make you believe 
you will be saved sometime, and keep you from believing 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 



229 



now and receiving now, that is all he wants. He knows 
that to-morrow will never come, and he puts it off from day 
to day, from month to month, and from year to year. My 
friends, Jesus Christ will never be more willing to save you 
than he is to-night, and the longer you put it off, the 
longer you wait, the further you are going from Him. Every 
day you put it off you are going back from God, and are 
making it harder for you to be saved. 

My next illustration is the serpent upon the pole. You 
sang a song to-night about it : " It is life just to look at the 
crucified One." It is not to work that we are told. It is 
just to look. How simple ! You know a fiery serpent had 
gone through Israel and bitten many people, and they died. 
And the Israelites went to Moses and said, " Entreat the 
Lord to take away this serpent." They did not ask for a 
remedy ; they did not ask for the bitten ones to be allowed 
to recover. They could hear the groans of the dying all 
around. But God more than granted their prayers. God 
always gives us more than we ask for. He not only took 
away the serpent, but he said to Moses, " Make a brass 
serpent and put it on a pole and lift it on high, so that all 
who are bitten shall look and live. And it shall come to 
pass that when they look, they shall not die, but live." How 
simple ? A little child can look. It is so simple that the 
learned and the unlearned can look. You do not have to 
go to college to learn how to look. You do not have to 
pass through a university to learn how to look. That little 
child there is not more than three or four years old, but it 
understands how to look. If a mother wants her little child to 
look, she simply says, " Look, my child," and that is enough. 
So all that the bitten Israelites had to do was to look and 
live ; and the very moment they looked they were saved in- 
stantaneously. It was as sudden as a flash of lightning. So 
many people say, " I do not understand how it is so many 
people can be saved all at once." Well, that is Jesus's way, 



230 GLAD TIDINGS. 

and that is all there is about it. " God's thoughts are not our 
thoughts, and God's ways are not our ways." If we had 
been going to save the world, we would have gone about 
it in a different way from God's way, I have no doubt. If 
we had been going to save the bitten Israelites, the last way 
we would probably have thought of would have been to make 
a brass serpent and put it upon a pole. But God works as He 
pleases, and we must learn that His ways are His own 
and must prevail ; and we must listen to Him, and if He 
says we will be saved at once, and that salvation is in- 
stantaneous, all we have to do is to submit and believe. 
Instead of looking at yourself, at your own sin, instead of 
looking at your past life, what you should do is just to take 
your eyes off of yourself and look at Christ. 

Now come back again to another Bible illustration. 
You know when the children of Israel came from the land 
of slavery and had the visitation of the fiery serpents, and 
after Moses had been commanded to raise the brazen ser- 
pent, he went to Pisgah and died, and Joshua led them into 
the Promised Land. Joshua then received a command 
from God that he should erect six cities, three on each side 
of the Jordan, which were to be cities of refuge. These 
places were to be put far enough apart so as to cover the 
whole land, that any man, no matter where he might be 
when he should have occasion to seek them, could easily 
gain access to one of them. The gates of these cities were to 
be kept open day and night, and the chief men of each city— 
the magistrates — were to keep the ways to these places free 
of all obstacles and stumbling-blocks, so that no one should 
be hindered in getting within the walls. And not only 
should the roads be kept smooth and well in repair, but all 
the bridges leading over streams and rivers should be kept 
up and in good condition, and sign posts were also to be 
placed at intervals along the road, showing the fugitive 
that he was on the right way — to keep him from straying. 



HO W TO BE SA VED. 23 1 

And to provide for the contingency of the man who was 
fleeing, not being able to read, there was a red finger put 
on the posts, which pointed the way. Thus a man even if 
he could read, was not compelled to stop and thus lose 
time ; he saw the sign and sped on. The cities were also 
placed on hills that every one could see them. The cities 
were erected for this purpose. It was considered a great 
dishonor among the Israelites if, when a man was killed, 
the nearest relation of him did not at once arm himself, 
seek out the slayer and kill him. Thus a man had no 
hope, if he had accidentally killed one, of saving his own 
life from the avenging hand of the brother or other relative 
but to get within the walls of the nearest city of refuge ; 
for it was the law that the moment he escaped that far the 
relation of the slain man could not touch him. Now for 
my illustration. Suppose I had killed a man unwittingly 
— that he and I had been out chopping in the woods, and 
suppose my axe had slipped out of my hand and had crush- 
ed in the skull of my companion. My only hope would 
be to get to one of these cities — my only hope was to es- 
cape for my life. I should have had no time to loiter, no 
time to hesitate or argue, no time to consider. I should 
have to start at once. The brother of my companion who 
had been killed, though thus purely through accident, was 
near and he was so incensed, or perhaps had some old 
score to pay off, that I should have no chance to stay and 
plead with him. He had made up his mind to kill me, and 
there was nothing left for me to do but fly. I know the 
young man's hot temper, and I see him on my track. I 
therefore spring out of the bush into the road, and it now 
becomes a life and death struggle. I see the city before 
me. Along the road I speed to the full extent of my 
strength. Down the hill I go as fast as I can ; up the ra- 
vine I make my way ; men see me coming ; they do not 
check me, or throw any obstacles in my path ; they get out of 



232 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



my way, and as I pass they wish me " God-speed," and warn 
me that the avenger is not far behind. Now I am in full 
view of the city ; the gates are wide open ; I know I shall 
not have to stop and knock when I get up to them. When 
I get closer, I see the citizens are on the walls. The in- 
formation has reached them that a poor refugee is coming. 
Some of them have had to flee themselves, and they sym- 
pathize with me. They thus await me ; but they see I am 
hard pressed. I am almost on the point of giving out. 
But I say to myself, " Courage ! another effort and I shall 
reach the gates and be safe." Oh, if I can only reach the 
city ! Ah, my friend, just look at the city ; don't let any 
thing take your attention away. Look ! look ! see what I 
have to do. If I stop, loiter, or linger I am lost. The 
avenger will soon be on me. I can almost hear him breath- 
ing behind me. I know, his sword is ready to hew me 
down. I get nearer to the walls now. I see the people 
plainly ■ they beckon on with their hands. I strain every 
nerve. " Hurry, hurry, he is almost upon you — oh, he will 
be killed." I bring every muscle into play. The people 
crowd around the gate to receive me. " Now, now," they 
cry. I make one more bound ; I pass them ; I am safe. 
That is instantaneous, isn't it ? One minute I am under 
the avenging sword ready to fall upon my head ; the next 
minute I am perfectly secure. The avenger cannot enter. 
The officers see to that ; they will not let him come in with 
his sword. Can you, my friends, have a better illustration of 
this life ? Don't you know that death is on your track now, 
and is ready to have you a victim ? Don't you know that 
he may be only a few years, a few months, a few weeks, a 
few days, or even a few moments only, from you ? Even 
this very afternoon he may catch up to you. You may 
think him miles and miles behind you, years and years 
away, but just as surely as you live here he is only a little 
way behind you now — a great deal nearer than you imag- 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 233 

ine. Haste then to a place of refuge. If you are outside 
the city you perish ; if you come within the walls of salva- 
tion you live secure, God has a city of refuge for you. 
He shows you by every unmistakable sign where it is, and 
He gives you warning that if you do not reach its walls you 
die. Come then. If you neglect these mercies how do 
you expect to save your life ? How can you loiter and lin- 
ger when death is bearing down upon you. A little while 
and you will be lost ; but if you make for the salvation of- 
fered to you, you will be safe in Christ, and you can look 
back and challenge death to his face. You can say in tri- 
umph, " Death, where is thy sting — grave, where is thy vic- 
tory." 

But still I bring before you another illustration. You 
often hear people say that they cannot understand how 
they can be saved all at once. Well, these Bible illustra- 
tions, I think, ought to make it very plain to them and to 
you. But here is another kind of illustration. Before the 
war we had three millions of slaves. If a negro escaped 
from the South and got as far as Mason and Dixon's line 
he was not safe even then. There a was a Fugitive Slave 
law which would have surrendered back that negro even if 
he had crossed that boundary. But there was a line over 
which should he go he would be free, and that line was 
the Canada boundary line. If he could cross that he 
would be forever a free man. Now for my illustration. A 
poor negro escapes from Kentucky and has succeeded? 
after many a weary day, in crossing the Ohio River. 
Though he has placed this barrier between him and his 
pursuers, still he knows he is not absolutely free ; he 
knows they can take him back out of that State should 
they come up with him. He has not yet come under any 
law that would protect him ; he is still under our own flag, 
and the flag of our country cannot protect him. He must 
go further. He knows he must reach Canada before the 



234 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



dreaded apprehension of being consigned back to his 
chains and tortures and stripes can be dismissed from his 
thoughts. He says, " If I can only get under that flag I 
am a free man — no slave can breathe under that flag." So 
the poor man makes his way toward this haven of rest. 
You can see him running. Yet a little while and he hears 
the bloodhounds behind him ; he knows his old master is 
on his track ; they have fleet horses and they will soon 
catch him. He is but a short distance from the line now, 
but his pursuers are in sight. Can he reach it in time ? 
He is right on the boundary now ■ he makes one more 
effort and he is safe. Here you see him one moment a 
slave ; now he has crossed the line and is free. Before 
he had reached the line he was subject to be taken back 
by his old master, and he and his posterity would have been 
slaves. Yet he has now crossed that line and they cannot 
touch him. All at once he goes over the line and is free. 
One minute he is a slave ; the next minute he is a citizen. 
Once a slave ; now a free man. Will you not also leave 
the devil's territory to-day my friends ? Make up your 
minds that you will leave your old master who has kept 
you a slave so long, and cross over to the side of the Lord. 
God will then take care of you ; He will not let any one harm 
you. He says to your enemies, "Touch him not ; he is 
mine." He will care for you as He would for the apple of 
His eye. The banner floats from Calvary, and when you 
come under its folds you are safe. My friends, do you not 
see it now ? Won't you cross the line and be saved ? Oh ! 
I have prayed that a thousand may be saved here to-day 
— yes, I prayed right now during this sermon. I don't 
know why you cannot be saved. Oh ! lift up your hearts 
in prayer that thousands may leave their sins and their 
slavery and ruin and come under the protection of the 
Lord. 

One day I was walking through the streets of York in 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 



2 35 



England. I saw a little way ahead a soldier coming to- 
ward me. He had the red uniform on of the infantry — the 
dress of the army. I knew at once when I saw him that 
he was a soldier. When he came near me I stopped him. 
I said, " My good man, if you have no objection I would 
like to ask you a few questions." " Certainly, Sir," said 
he. " Well, then, I would like to know how you first be- 
came a soldier." " Yes, Sir, I will tell you. You see, Sir, 
I wanted to become a soldier, and the recruiting officer 
was in our town, and I went up to him and told him that I 
wanted to enlist. Well, Sir, he said, 'All right,' and the 
first thing he did, Sir, he took an English shilling out of 
his pocket, Sir, and put it into my hand. The very mo- 
ment, Sir, a recruiting-sergeant puts a shilling into your 
hand, Sir, you are a soldier." I said to myself, " That is 
the very illustration I want" That man was a free man 
at one time — he could go here and there ; do just what he 
liked ; but the moment the shilling was put into his hand 
he was subject to the rules of war, and Queen Victoria 
could send him anywhere and make him obey the rules and 
regulations of the army. He is a soldier the very minute 
he takes the shilling. He has not got to wait to put on 
the uniform. And when you ask me how a man may be- 
come converted at once, I answer, just the same as that 
man became a soldier. The citizen becomes a soldier in 
a minute, and from being a freeman becomes subject to 
the commands of others. The moment you take Christ 
into your heart, that moment your name is written in the 
roll of Heaven. You are enlisted a soldier of Christ, and 
you cannot then do as you choose, but you must do what 
He lays down. Don't you see then how you can become a 
Christian at once, my friends ? It is very plain. Don't 
go out of this hall to-day, then, and say you can't see it. 
I don't see how I can make it any plainer. Though you 
accept Christ, yet you are a sinner still, but a saved sinner. 



236 GLAD TIDINGS. 

There is a great deal of difference between the two — be- 
tween a saved and an unsaved sinner. I have been a saved 
sinner myself for twenty-one years. You ask me if I don't 
sin. Yes, I do, but I hate sin. For twenty-one years I have 
been a soldier — a poor and unworthy soldier — but still a 
soldier. Twenty-one years ago this month I took, as I may 
say, the English shilling : I enlisted in the army of Christ, 
and he has been ever since my life, my Lord, my all. Now, 
dear friends, won't you have him ? " As many as received 
Him He gave power to become the Sons of God." Qh ! just 
say you will receive Him then. 

Yet you hear people say they can't understand that ; 
they cannot imagine but they have to do something to 
satisfy God. But I tell you- that God is satisfied, God is 
reconciled. You have the word of Paul that God is recon- 
ciled to us. Yes, thank God, He is reconciled to the world. 
Cai you reconcile God ? Christ has done that. The 
moment a sinner takes this to .heart, and comes to Jesus, 
that moment he is saved. Perhaps a story will illustrate 
this as well as any thing. In England I was told about an 
only son — these only sons are hard to bring up properly ; 
they have every whim and caprice gratified ; they generally 
grow up headstrong, self-willed, and obstinate, and make 
it miserable for any one to have anything to do with them. 
Well, this son had a father something like himself in dis- 
position. And one day a quarrel arose between them, and 
at last, as the son would not give in and own he was wrong, 
the father in a fit of anger said that he wished his son 
would leave his house and never come back again. " Well," 
rejoined the boy (as angry as his father), " I will leave, 
and I never will enter your house again until you ask me." 
" Well, then, you won't come back in a hurry," replied his 
father. The boy then left. The father gave up the boy, 
but the mother did not. Perhaps these men here won't 
understand that, but you women do. A great many things 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 



237 



will separate a man from his wife, a father from his son, 
but nothing in the wide, wide, world will ever separate a 
mother from her child. A jury can bring in a verdict 
against her son ; the hisses may go up against him ; he is 
condemned to be hanged ; there is not a friendly paper to 
write an article in his favor. But if his mother be there, 
the boy has at least one eye to rest upon him, one heart to 
beat in sympathy with him. He is taken to the cold, damp 
cell and left to his fate. All forsake him but his mother. 
She comes there ; she puts her arms around his neck ; she 
kisses him ■ she would spend all the time with him if the 
officers would allow it. She cannot save him. The day 
before his execution she sees him for the last time ; she 
has not the courage to see him in the shadow of the gal- 
lows. The supreme moment at length arrives ; he is led 
forth, and in a few minutes he dangles a corpse. Does 
the mother then forget him ? No ; even now she goes to 
his grave, strews flowers upon it, and waters them with her 
tears. A mother's love is next to God's love. Death is 
stronger than everything else ; yes, but with the exception 
of one thing — a mother's love. Death and decay may 
wreck this city, buildings may cease to exist, everything 
yields before them but a mother's love. To refer to the 
illustration again : When the father had given the boy up, 
he thought he would never come back, the mother was 
taken very sick. She had been trying by every means in 
her power to effect a reconciliation between the father and 
son. When she found she could not recover from her ill- 
ness she again renewed her efforts with all the power of a 
mother's love. She wrote to her son, imploring him to 
ask his father's forgiveness. He sent word back that he 
would not write to his father unless his father first wrote to 
him. " I will never come home until he asks me," he said. 
The mother began to get lower and lower. Her husband 
at this time came to the bedside and asked if there was 



238 GLAD TIDINGS. 

anything he could do for her. "Yes, yes," she cried, 
" there is one thing — you can send for my boy. That is the 
only wish I have on earth that is not gratified. If you do 
not care for him while I am alive, who will care for him 
when I am gone ? 1 cannot bear to die and leave my 
child among strangers. Just let me see him and speak to 
him and I will die in peace." The father said he could not 
send for him. He could, but he wouldn't. He did not 
want to. The mother has but a few hours now to live. 
She again beseeches her husband that he will send for 
their son. The father said he would send a dispatch to 
him, but in her name. " No, no ; that would not do." 
Well, he can stand it no longer, and he signs his own at 
the foot of the telegram. It was sent, and the moment 
the boy received it he took the first train home. The 
father was standing by the side of the bed when the son 
arrived. But when he saw the door open he turned his 
back upon him and walked away. The mother grasped 
the hand of her boy and pressed it again and again, and 
kissed him fervently. " Oh ! just speak to your father, 
won't you ? Just speak the first word." " No, mother, I 
will not speak to him until he speaks to me." The excite- 
ment was too much and she was rapidly sinking. She told 
her husband she was dying. She now took his hand in hers, 
and held the hand of her boy in the other, and sought and 
strove to bring about a reconciliation. But neither would 
speak. With her last strength she then placed the hand of 
the son into the hand of the father and sank down into 
the arms of death, and was borne by the angels into the 
kingdom of God. The father looked at the wife and then 
at the boy ; he caught his eye ; they fell upon each other's 
necks, and there stood weeping by the bed of the departed, 
That is the illustration I have given, but it is not a fair 
illustration in this respect: God is not angry with us. 
With that exception it is a good illustration of reconcilia- 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 



239 



tion. Christ brought the hand of the Father clear down to the 
world ; He put the hand of the sinner into the hand of 
His Father and died that they might be reconciled. You 
have nothing to do then to bring about a reconciliation. 
God is already reconciled to us and is ready to save us. 
Let us pray. 



LOVE. 



We have for our subject this afternoon, "Love." I 
have often thought I wouldn't have but one text; If I 
thought I could only make the world believe that God is 
love, I would only take that text and go up and down the 
earth trying to counteract what Satan has been telling 
them — that God is not love. He has made the world be- 
lieve it effectually. It would not take twenty-four hours 
to make the world come to God if you could only make 
them believe God is love. If you can really make a man 
believe you love him, you have won him ; and if I could 
only make people really believe that God loves them, what 
a rush we would see for the Kingdom of God ! Oh, how 
they would rush in ! But man has got a false idea about 
God, and he will not believe that He is a God of love. It 
is because he don't know Him. 

Now, in Paul's farewell letter to the Corinthians, in 
the 13th chapter, 2d Corinthians, he says : " Finally, 
brethren, farewell. Be perfect. Be of good comfort. Be 
of one mind. Live in peace, and the God of love "- — he 
calls Him the God of love — " and peace shall be with 
you." Then John, who was better acquainted with Christ, 
telling us about the love God has for this perishing world, 
writes in this epistle in the evening of his life these 
words: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is 
of God, and every one that loveth is born of God and 



: 



LOVE. 241 

knoweth God, and he that loveth not knoweth no God, for 
God is love." We built a church in Chicago a few years 
ago, and we were so anxious to make people believe that 
God is love that we thought if we could not preach it into 
their hearts we would burn "it in, and so right over the 
pulpit we had the words put in gas jets, " God is love," 
and every night we had it there. A man going along there 
one night glanced in through the door and saw the text. 
He was a poor prodigal, and he passed on, and as he 
walked away he said to himself, " God is love ? No. God 
is not love. God does not love me. He does not love 
me, for I am a poor, miserable sinner. If God was love, 
He would love me. God is not love." Yet there the text 
was, burning down into his soul. And he went on a little 
way further, and turned around and came back and went 
into the meeting. He didn't hear what the sermon was, 
but the text got into his heart, and that is what we want. 
It is of very little account what men say, if God's word 
only gets into the heart. And he stayed after the meeting 
was over, and I found him there, weeping like a child ; 
but as I unfolded the Scripture and told him how God had 
loved him from his earliest childhood all along, the light 
of the Gospel broke into his mind, and he went away re- 
joicing. This would be the best meeting to-day we have 
had yet, if we could only make this audience believe that 
God is love. 

Now, our brother who opened the meeting with prayer 
referred to the difference between human and Divine love. 
That is the very trouble with us. We are all the time 
measuring God's love by ours. We know that we love a 
man as long as he is worthy, and then we cast him off ; 
but that is not Divine love. There would be no hope for 
any of us if the Lord did that, and I have the idea that 
our mothers are to blame for a good deal of that in their 
teaching during our childhood. They tell their children 



242 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



that the Lord loves them when they are good children, 
and when they are bad children the Lord does not love 
them. That is false teaching. God loves them all the 
time just the same as you love your children. Suppose a 
mother should come in here with a little child, and after 
she has been here a while the child begins to cry, and she 
says, " Keep still," but the child keeps on crying, and so 
she turns him over to the police and says, " Take that 
child, I don't want him." What would you say of such a 
mother as that ? Teach a child that God loves him only 
so long as he is good, and that when he is bad the Lord 
does not love him, and you will find that when he grows 
up, if he has a bad temper he will have the idea that God 
hates him because he thinks God don't love him when he 
has got a bad temper, and as he has a bad temper all the 
time, of course God does not love him at all, but hates 
him all the time. Now God hates sin, but He loves the 
sinner, and there is a great difference between the love of 
God and our love — all the difference in the world between 
the human and the Divine love. 

Now, turn a moment to the 13th chapter of John's 
Gospel, 1 st verse : " Now, before the feast of the Pass- 
over, when Jesus knew His hour was come that He should 
depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved 
His own which were in the world He loved them unto the 
end." His love is unchangeable. That night He- knew 
very well what was going to happen. Judas had gone out 
to betray Him. He knew it. He had already left that 
little band to go out and sell Christ. Do you tell me 
Christ did not love Judas ? That very night He said to 
him, " Judas, what thou doest do quickly," and when 
Judas, meeting Him in the garden, kissed Him, and He 
said, " Betrayest thou thy Master with a kiss ? " was it not 
the voice of love and compassion that ought to have broken 
Judas's heart ? He loved him in the very hour that he 



LOVE. 



2 43 



betrayed Him, and that is what is going to make hell so 
terrible, that you go there with the love of God beneath 
your feet. It is not that He don't love you, but you de- 
spise His love. It is a terrible thing to despise love 
He loved them unto the end. He knew very well that 
Peter was going to deny Him that night, and curse and 
swear because he was mistaken for Jesus's companion. 
He knew all His disciples would forsake Him and leave 
Him to suffer alone, and yet He says He loved them unto 
the end. And the sweetest words that fell from the lips 
of the Son of God were that night when they were going 
to leave Him. Those words that fell from His lips that 
night will live forever. How they will live in the hearts 
of God's people ! We could not get on very- well without 
the 14th of John and the 15th and the 16th. It was on 
that memorable night that he uttered those blessed 
words, and on that very night that He told them how 
much God loved them. It seems as if that particular 
night, when He was about to be deserted by all, His heart 
was bursting with love for His flock. 

Just let us look at the 16th chapter and the 27 th verse 
and see what He says : " For the Father Himself loveth 
you because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I 
came from God." I don't know but what Christ felt that 
there might be some of His disciples that would not love 
the Father as they loved Him. I remember for the first 
few years after I was converted I had a good deal more 
love for Christ than for God the Father, whom I looked 
upon as the stern Judge, while I regarded Christ as the 
Mediator who had come between me and that stern Judge, 
and had appeased His wrath \ but when I got a little bet- 
ter acquainted with my Bible those views all fled. After I 
became a father and woke up to the realization of what it 
cost God to have His Son die, I began to see that God 
was to be loved just as much as His Son was. Why, it 



244 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



took more love for God to give His Son to die than it 
would to die Himself. You would a thousand times soon- 
er die yourself in your son's place than have him taken 
away. If the executioner was about to take your son to 
the gallows, you would say : " Let me die in his stead. 
Let my son be spared." Oh, think of the love God must 
have had for this world, that He gave His only begotten 
Son to die for it, and that is what I want you to understand. 
" The Father, Himself loveth ye because ye have loved 
Me." If a man has loved Christ, God will set His love 
upon him. Then in the 17th chapter, 23d verse, in that 
wonderful prayer He made that night : "I in them and 
Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one and 
that the world may know Thou hast sent Me and hast 
loved them as Thou hast loved Me." God could look 
down from Heaven and see His Son fulfilling His will, and 
He said, " This is my beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased." But when it is said, " God loved us as He lov- 
ed His own Son," it used to seem to me to be downright 
blasphemy, until I found it was in the Word of God. That 
was the wonderful prayer He made on the night of His be- 
trayal. Is there any love in the world like that ? Is there 
anything to be compared to the love of God ? Well may 
Paul say "it passeth knowledge." 

And then I can imagine some of you saying " Well, He 
loved His disciples and He loves those who serve Him 
faithfully, but then I have been untrue." I may be 
speaking now to some backsliders, but if I am, I want to 
say to every one here : " The Lord loves you." A back- 
slider came into the inquiry-room night before last, and I 
was trying to tell him God loved him and he would hardly 
believe me. He thought because he had not kept up his 
love and faithfulness to God and to his own vows, that 
God had stopped loving him. Now, it says in John, 1st 
chapter; "He loved them unto the end." That is, His 



LOVE. 



245 



love was unchangeable and you may have forgotten Him 
and betrayed Him and denied Him, but nevertheless 
He loves you, He loves the backslider. There is not 
a man here that has wandered from God and betrayed 
Him but what the Lord Jesus loves him and wants 
him to come back. Now in this 14th chapter of Hosea 
He says, " I will heal every backslider, I will love them 
freely. So the Lord tells the backsliders," If you will only 
come back to Me I will forgive you." It was thus with 
Peter who denied his Lord ; the Saviour forgave him, and 
sent him to preach His glorious Gospel on the day of Pen- 
tecost, when three thousand were won to Christ under one 
sermon of a backslider. Don't let a backslider go out of this 
hall to-day with that hard talk about the Lord. No back- 
slider can say God has left him. He may think so, but 
it is one of the devil's lies. The Lord never left a man 
yet. 

Just turn to the 31st chapter of Jeremiah and the 3d 
verse. " He hath loved us," he says, " with an everlasting 
love." Now there is the difference between human and 
divine love. The one is fleeting, the other is everlasting. 
There is no end of God's love. I can imagine some of 
you saying : " If God has loved us with an everlasting love, 
why does it say that God is angry with the sinner every 
day ! " Why, dear friends, that very word " anger " in the 
Scriptures is one of the very strongest evidences and ex- 
pressions of God's love. Suppose I have got two boys, 
and one of them goes out and lies and swears and steals 
and gets drunk ; if I have no love for him, I don't care 
what he does ; but just because I do love him it makes me 
angry to see him take that course, and it is because God 
loves the sinner that He gets angry with him. That very 
passage shows how strong God's love is. Let me tell you, 
dear friends, God loves you in all your backslidings and 
wanderings. You may despise His love and trample it 



246 GLAD TIDINGS. 

under your feet and go down to ruin, but it won't be be- 
cause God don't love you. I once heard of a father who 
had a prodigal boy, and the boy had sent his mother down 
to the grave with a broken heart, and one evening the boy 
started out as usual to spend the night in drinking and 
gambling, and his old father as he was leaving said : " My 
son, I want to ask a favor of you to-night. You have not 
spent an evening with me since your mother died, and now 
I want you to spend this night at home. I have been very 
lonely since your mother died. Now won't you gratify your 
old father by staying at home with him ? " " No," said the 
young man, " it is lonely here, and there is nothing to in- 
terest me, and 1 am going out." And the old man prayed 
and wept, and at last he said : " My boy, you are just kill- 
ing me as you have killed your mother. These hairs are 
growing whiter, and you are sending me, too, to the grave." 
Still the boy would not stay, and the old man said : " If 
you are determined to go to ruin, you must go over this 
old body to-night. I cannot resist you. You are stronger 
than I, but if you go out you must go over this body." 
And he laid himself down before the door, and that son 
[and here the preacher with greater emphasis raised his 
voice] walked over the form of his father, trampled the 
love of his father under foot, and went out. 

And that is the way with sinners. You have got to 
trample the blood of God's Son under your feet if you go 
down to death, to make light of the blood of the innocent, 
to make light of the wonderful love of God, to despise it. 
But whether you do or not, He loves you still. I can im- 
agine some of you saying, Why does He not show His love 
to us ? Why, how can it be any further shown than it is ? 
You say so because you won't read His Word and find out 
how much He loves you. If any man will take a concord- 
ance and run through the Scriptures with the one word 
love, you will find out how much He loves you ; you will 



LOPE. 



247 



find out that it is all one great assurance of His love. He 
is continually trying to teach you this one lesson, and to 
win you to Himself by a cross of love. All the burdens 
He has placed upon the sons of men have been out of 
pure love, to bring you to Himself. Those who do not be- 
lieve that God is love are under the power of the Evil One. 
He has blinded you, and you have been deceived with his 
lies. God's dealing has been all love, love, love, from the 
fall of Adam to the present hour. Adam's calamity 
brought down God's love. No sooner did the news reach 
- heaven than God came down after Adam with His love. 
That voice that rang through Eden was the voice of love, 
hunting after the fallen one — " Adam where art thou ? " 
For all these thousand years that voice of love has been 
sounding down the ages. Out of His. love He made a way 
of escape for Adam. God saved him out of his pity and 
love. 

In the 63d chapter of Isaiah, and the 9th verse, we 
read : " In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the an- 
gel of His presence saved them. In His love and in His 
pity He redeemed them ; and He bare them, and carried 
them all the days of old." In all their affliction He was 
afflicted. You cannot afflict one of God's creatures with- 
out afflicting Him. He takes the place of a living father. 
There a man has a sick child burning with fever. How 
gladly the father or the mother would take that fever and 
put it into their own . bosoms. The mother would take 
from a child its loathsome disease right out of its body, 
and put it into her own — such is a mother's love. How 
she pities the child, and how gladly she would suffer in the 
place of the child ! That illustration has been often used 
here — " As a mother pitieth her children." You cannot 
afflict any of God's creatures but God feels it. The Son 
of His bosom came to redeem us from the cares of the 
world. I do not see how any man with an open Bible be- 



248 GLAD TIDINGS. 

fore him can get up and say to me that he does not see how 
God is love. " Greater love hath no man than this, that a 
man will lay down his life for his friend." Christ laid 
his life on the Cross, and cried in His agony, " Father, 
forgive them,, they know not what they do." That was 
wonderful love. You and I would have called fire down 
from heaven to consume them. We would have sent them 
all down into the hot pavement of hell. But the Son of 
God lifted up His cry, " Father forgive them, they know not 
what they do." 

I hear some one say, " I do not see, I do not under- 
stand how it is that He loves us." What more proof do 
you want that God loves you ? You say, " I am not 
worthy to be loved." That is true. I will admit that. 
And He does not love you because you deserve it. It will 
help us to get at the Divine love to look a little into our 
own families, and at our human love. Take a mother with 
nine children, and they are all good children save one. 
One is a prodigal, and he has wandered off, and he is 
everything that is bad. That mother will probably love 
that prodigal boy as much or more than all the rest put 
together. It will be with a love mingled with pity. A 
friend of mine was visiting at a house some time ago, 
where quite a company were assembled and were talking 
pleasantly together. He noticed that the mother seemed 
agitated, and was all the while going out and coming in. 
He went to her aside and asked her what troubled her, 
and she took him out into another room and introduced 
him to her boy. There he was, a poor wretched boy, all 
mangled and bruised with the fall of sin. She said, " I 
have much more trouble with him than with all the rest. 
He has wandered far, but he is my boy yet." She loved 
him still. So, God loves you still. 

That love, it ought to break your hearts to hear of, and 
it ought to bring you right to Him. You may say you do 



LOVE. 249 

not deserve it, and that is true ; but because you do not de- 
serve it, God offers it to you. You may say, " If I could get 
rid of my sins, God would love me." In Revelations, 1st 
chapter, 5th verse, it says : " Unto Him that loved us and 
washed us from our sins in His own blood." It does not 
say He washed us from our sins and then loved us. He 
loved us first, and then washed us clean. Some people say, 
You must turn away from sin, and then Christ will love 
you. But how can you get rid of it until you come to Him ? 
He takes us into His own bosom, and then He cleanses us 
from sin. He has shed His blood for you : He wants you, 
and He will redeem you to-day if you will. An English- 
man told me a story once that may serve to illustrate this 
truth, that God loves men in their sin. He does not love 
sin, but he loves men even in their sin. He seeks to save 
them from sin. There was a boy a great many years ago, 
stolen in London, the same as Charley Ross was stolen 
here. Long months and years passed away, and the 
mother had prayed and prayed, as that mother of Charley 
Ross has prayed, I suppose, and all her efforts had failed 
and they had given up all hope ; but the mother did not quite 
give up her hope. One clay a little boy was sent up into 
the neighboring house to sweep the chimney, and by some 
mistake he got down again through the wrong chimney. 
When he came down, he came in by the sitting-room 
chimney. His memory began at once to travel back through 
the years that had passed. He thought that things looked 
strange and familiar. The scenes of the early days of 
youth were dawning upon him ; and as he stood there sur- 
veying the place, his mother came into the room. He stood 
there covered with rags and soot. Did she wait until she 
sent him to be washed before she rushed and took him in 
her arms ? No, indeed ; it was her own boy. She took him 
to her arms all black and smoke, and hugged him to her 
bosom, and shed tears of joy upon his head. You have 



250 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



wandered very far from Him ■ there may not be a sound 
spot on you, but if you will just come to God, He will for- 
give and receive you. There is a verse in Isaiah xxxviii. 
— the 17 th verse — that I think a good deal of. It reads : 
" Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of 
corruption, for Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy 
back." Mark you, the love comes first. He did not say 
that He had taken away sins and cast them behind Him. 
He loved us first and then He took our sins away. I like 
that little word m-y, " my," there. The reason, we do not 
get any benefit from Scripture is because we are always 
talking about generalizations. We say : God loves nations, 
God loves churches, and loves certain classes of people. 
But here it reads, " Out of love to my soul He has taken 
all my sins and cast them behind His back, they are gone 
from me forever. If they are cast behind His back, how 
can Satan ever get at them again ? I will defy any fiend 
from hell to find them. Satan can torment me with them 
no more. 

There are four expressions wherein God puts our sins 
away. The first is, He has blotted out our sins like a 
thick cloud. You remember, don't you, how in the morn- 
ing we wake and sometimes find the sky covered with 
clouds, and by the afternoon there is not a cloud to be 
seen. Can any one tell where the clouds go to ? They 
vanish and we see them no more, and no one can tell what 
has become of them. God has blotted out our sins like 
these clouds. Another verse is : "I will remove them as 
far as the east is from the west." Another is : "I will roll 
them into the depths of the sea." And then there is this 
one which reads : " Who will take them out of love to my 
soul and cast them behind His back." They are gone 
through time and eternity. Bear in mind, it is out of love 
He does it, not out of justice. It is not justice we want, 
but mercy. God feels wonderful love, which it ought to 



LOVE. 251 

break every heart here to contemplate, and the love of God 
ought to sweep over this audience and bow every head here 
to-night and fill our hearts full of gratitude and praise that 
God so loved us and gave Himself for us. It says in 
Galatians, 2d chapter, 20th verse, "Who loved me and 
gave Himself for me." Take that verse in Isaiah, " Who 
loved my soul," and put it with this verse, " Who loved me 
and gave Himself for me," and you have it all. Christ 
shed every drop of His precious blood for sinners. Some 
people say " only one single drop of Christ's blood is 
enough to cleanse you from sin." It is not true. If one 
drop would have done it He would have shed but one drop ; 
but it took every drop of blood that His life had, and He 
gave it all up to save us. Paul says, " He loved me and 
gave Himself for me," and so Paul loved Him in return. 
If you could but get that thought in your mind that Christ 
has loved you so much as to give Himself for you, you could 
not help loving Him in return. 

There are three thoughts I have tried to bring out to- 
day : that God is love ; that His love is unchangeable ; 
that His love is everlasting. The fourth thought is this : 
that His love is unfailing. Your love is not. His is. When 
people come to me and talk about their love for Cod, it 
chills me through and through ; the thermometer goes 
down fifty degrees ; but when they talk about God's love for 
them, I know what they would say. So do not think for 
a moment that God does not love you a good deal more 
than you love Him. There is not a sinner here, there is 
not an unsaved man here to-night but He wants to save, 
just as a father loves his child, only a thousand times more. 
Is there a poor wanderer here that has wandered far from 
Christ ? He sends me to invite you to come to Him again. 
I don't care how sinful you are ; let this text sink deep 
into your soul to-day, " God is Love." 



RETRIBUTION. 



I want to talk to you about the 19th verse of the 16th 
chapter of Luke — just two words: "Son, remember/" 
You that were here yesterday will remember that I spoke 
to you about the love of God, and you that were here last 
week will remember that I spoke to you of Heaven, and 
tried to lure you on to that world of light, and if I consult- 
ed my own feelings, I should be preaching to you about 
these things to-day. But if a man is going to be a servant 
and a messenger of God, he must believe the message just 
as he finds it. I would not dare to go out of this city 
without delivering to you this side of God's truth. Some 
people come to me and say, " You do not really believe 
that there is such a thing as everlasting retribution and 
future punishment, do you ? Yes, I do. The same Christ 
that talked to us about that bright upper world has given 
us a picture of the world of the lost. In this portion of 
the Scripture we have read to-day, it has been drawn very 
vividly by the Master Himself. We hear a voice coming 
up out of the lost world of a man that was once upon the 
earth, and fared sumptuously every day, and yet was lost, 
not for time, but for eternity. Over and over again Christ 
while here warned those that hung upon His lips. Once, 
in speaking to his desciples, He spoke about the worm 
that dieth not ; about one being cast into hell, where the 

worm dieth not. 
252 



RETRIBUTION. 



253 



I believe that worm that dieth not is our memory ; I 
believe that what will make that lost world so terrible 
to us is memory. We say now that we forget, and we 
think we do, but the time is coming when we will remember 
and we cannot forget. There are many things we will 
want to forget, especially our sins, that have been blotted 
out by God. If God has forgotten them you would think 
we ought to forget them ; every sin that has not been so 
taken away and covered up, by the blood of His own Son 
will come back to us by and by. We talk about the all- 
recording angel keeping record of our life ; God makes us 
keep our own record. We won't need any one to condemn 
us at the bar of God. We will condemn ourselves. It will 
be our own conscience that will come up as a witness 
against us. God won't condemn us at the bar of God ; we 
will condemn ourselves. Will He speak to us then, if we 
stand there, having neglected His offer of mercy, His offer 
of salvation here on earth? No ; memory is God's officer, 
and when God touches the secret springs of our memory, 
saying, " Son, remember," we cannot help but remember. 
God shall touch these secret springs and say, " Son and 
daughter, remember," and then tramp, tramp, tramp will 
come before us a long procession — all the sins we have 
ever committed. 

I have been twice in the jaws of death. Once I was 
drowning, and the third time I was about to sink I was 
rescued. In the twinkling of an eye everything I had said, 
done, or thought of flashed across my mind. I do not un- 
derstand how everything in a man's life can be crowded 
into his recollection in an instant of time, but nevertheless 
it all flashed through my mind. Another time when I 
thought I was dying it all came back to me again. It is 
just so that all things we think we have forgotten will come 
back by and by. It is only a question of time. We will 
hear the words, " Son, remember," and it is a good deal 



em 
2m- 



254 GLAD TIDINGS. 

better for us now to remember our sins and confess th 
before it is too late. Christ said to his disciples, " Remem 
ber Lot's wife." Over and over again, when the Children 
of Israel were brought out of Egypt, God said to them, 
"Remember where I found you, and how I delivered you." 
He wanted them to remember His goodness to them, and the 
time is coming when, if they forget His goodness and de- 
spise it, they will be without mercy. What Satan wants is 
to keep us from thinking \ to drown our memory and stifle 
our conscience. A man came into the inquiry room the 
other night and said he wanted to be a Christian, but he 
could not believe that there was any future punishment. I 
said, " What are you going to do with that man who has 
been selling liquor for twenty years ? A widowed mother 
goes to him and says, ' I have a son who goes into your 
place every night; he is being ruined, and it is killing me.' 
She begs him not to sell any more liquor to her son ; she 
begs and pleads with him. He orders her out of the store 
and goes on and ruins that widow's only son, as he ruins 
thousands of others. Is he going to be ushered right into 
glory when he dies ? What would you do with him ? Would 
you take him right into heaven ? " ' He said he did not 
know what he would do. But the word of God teaches us 
plainly by that there is future retribution ; if it does not 
teach that, it does not teach anything. If the word of 
God tells us about the glory of heaven and the mansions 
that Christ is going to prepare, it tells us also about the 
torments of hell • it tells us about the rich man lifting up 
his face out of the torment and crying for one drop of 
water. 

This was not presented to us then just to frighten 
people. Some people say, " How you are trying to frighten 
us ; you say such things just to alarm us." I would con- 
sider myself an unfaithful servant if I did not so warn you ; 
the blood of your soul would be required at my hands if I 



RETRIBUTION. 255 

did not warn you. I do not want you to say I came 
here and never said anything about the lost souls ; I do 
not want any of you to think I have covered up this doc- 
trine, and I say it to you because God says it. Christ says, 
" How shall you escape the damnation of hell ? " No one 
spoke of the last as Christ did • none knew it as Christ 
did. If man were not lost, what did Christ come into the 
world for, or what does the death of the Son of God 
mean ? Is it not better for us just to bow to the word of 
God and take it as God spoke it ? If I checked up a 
book and found there were a hundred statements in that 
book, and I had reason to believe, and in fact knew that 
ninety-nine out of a hundred of these statements were 
correct, and I did not have the evidence at hand to prove 
that the other was, I would have good reason to believe it 
correct, would I not ? This picture drawn of the lost world 
in the sixteenth chapter of Luke was drawn by the Son of 
God Himself. He said this rich man was lifting up his 
face in torment, not because he was rich, but because the 
rich man had neglected salvation. If men seek salvation, 
rich or poor, they will be saved ; if they do not, rich or 
poor they will be lost. Do you suppose those antediluvi- 
ans who perished in Noah's day, those men too vile and 
sinful for the world — do you think God swept those men 
right into heaven and left Noah, the only righteous man, 
to struggle through the deluge ? Do you think when the 
judgment came upon Sodom that those wicked men were 
taken right into the presence of God and the only righteous 
man was left behind to suffer ? 

There will be no tender, loving Jesus coming and offer- 
ing you salvation either. He will be far from you there. 
There will be no loving wife to weep over you there, young 
man. You may have a praying wife here to-day, but re- 
member in that lost world you will have no praying 
wife. Did you ever think how dark this world would be- 



256 GLAD TIDINGS. 

come if all the praying wives and mothers and ministers 
were out of it ? Think of that lost world where there are 
no praying wives or mothers ! Remember the time is 
coming when you will have no loved mother to pray for 
your soul and for you. Undoubtedly many in that lost 
world would give millions, if they had them, if they had 
their mothers now to pray them out of that place ; but it 
is too late. They have been neglecting salvation until the 
time has come when God says, ' ; Cut them down • they 
incumber the ground; the day of mercy is closed." You 
laugh at the Bible ; but how many there are in that lost 
world to-day that would give countless treasures if they 
had the blessed Bible there ! You may make sport of 
ministers, but bear in mind there will be no ministers of 
the Gospel there. There will be none there for you to 
laugh at. Here they are, remember, God's messengers to 
you, His best gifts to you — these loving friends that look 
after your soul. You may have some friends praying for 
your salvation to-day. Remember, you will not have one 
in that lost world. There will be no one to come and put 
his hand on your shoulder and weep over you there and 
pray for you to come to Christ. Sunday mornings you 
hear the chiming of the bells telling you it is God's day. 
You very often see the people going up to the house of 
God, but bear in mind that in that lost world no bell will 
summon you to God's holy tabernacle, no bell will warn 
you of the Sabbath day. There will be no Sabbath there 
for you to make light of and sport of. It will be too late. 
Some of you have got Sabbath school teachers that are 
burdened with your salvation at this present time. They 
are pleading day and night that you may be won to Christ. 
Bear in mind that in that lost world no kind teachers will 
plead for you or with you. There will be no special meet- 
ings there. 

A great many are laughing and making light of 






RETRIBUTION. 



2 57 



these meetings here. When you die, if you come here 
with that purpose, I believe this Hippodrome will rise up 
in judgment against you. This building has been put up 
without money and without expense to you. God put it 
into the hearts of Christian men to hire this building at a 
great expense and throw it wide open. No contributions 
are taken up. No calls are made upon you for money. 
You cannot say that we want your money. We don't want 
your money. We want you, and are trying to win you to 
Christ, and if you go down from this building to hell, you 
will remember the meetings we had here. You will 
remember how these ministers looked ; how the people 
around you closed their eyes and were lifting up their 
hearts in prayer for you, and how it has seemed sometimes 
as if we were in the very presence of God Himself, for we 
have witnessed certainly wonderful displays of the power 
of God in this place many times. In that lost world you 
won't hear that beautiful hymn, " Jesus of Nazareth pass- 
eth by." He will have passed by. There will be no 
Jesus passing that way. There will be no sweet songs of 
Zion there. You come here day after day and hear these 
sweet songs, " Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom 
fly," " There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from 
ImmanuePs veins, " Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me 
hide myself in thee." Oh, my friends, you will not hear 
those songs in that world. They will not be sung there. 
It is now a day of grace and a day of mercy. God is cal- 
ling the world to Himself. He says, I have no pleasure in 
the death of the wicked. Turn ye, turn ye, for why will 
ye die ? " Oh, if you neglect this salvation, how shall you 
escape ? What hope is there ? May your memories be 
wide awake to-day, and may you remember that Christ 
stands right here ; He is in this assembly, offering salvation 
to every soul. You may never hear this text again until 
you hear it on the shores of eternity, and then you will re- 



258 GLAD TIDINGS. 

member this Friday afternoon, and you will remember how 
everything looked then, how Mr. Sankey sung that hymn, 
" Sowing the Seed," and you will remember the text and 
the sermon will all come back to you. 

I was at the Paris Exhibition in 1867, and I noticed 
there a little oil painting, only about a foot square, and the 
face was the most hideous I have ever seen. On the 
paper attached to the painting were the words " Sowing 
the tares," and the face looked more like a demon's than a 
man's. As he sowed these tares, up came serpents and 
reptiles, and they were crawling up on his body, and all 
around were woods with wolves and animals prowling in 
them. I have seen that picture many times since. Ah ! 
the reaping time is coming. If you sow to the flesh you 
must reap the flesh. If you sow to the wind you must 
reap the whirlwind. God wants you to come to Him and 
receive salvation as a gift. You can decide your destiny 
to-day if you will. Heaven and hell are set before this 
audience, and you are called upon to choose. Which will 
you have? If you will take Him He will receive you to 
His arms. If you reject Him He will reject you. 

Now, my friends, will Christ ever be more willing to 
save you than He is now ? Will He ever have more power 
than He has now ? Then why not be saved now ? Why 
not make up your mind to be saved now while mercy is 
offered to you ? I remember a few years ago, while the 
Spirit of God was working in church, I closed the meeting 
one night by asking if there were any that would like to 
become Christians to rise, and to my great joy a man 
arose that had been anxious for some time. I went up to 
him and took him by the hand and shook it, and said, " I 
am glad to see you get up. You are coming out for the 
Lord now in earnest ? " " Yes," said he, " I think so. 
That is, there is only one thing in my way." Said I, " What's 
that ? " " Well," said he, " I lack moral courage. I con- 



RE TRIE UTION. 259 

fess to you that if such a man" — naming a friend of his — 
" had been here to-night I should not have risen. He 
would laugh at me if he knew of this, and I don't believe 
I have the courage to tell him." " But," said I, " you have 
got to come out boldly for the Lord if you come out at all. 
That is what you have got to do ; " and I talked with him 
and he was trembling from head to foot. I thought the 
spirit of God was striving with him, and I believe the 
Spirit was striving earnestly with him. I did not labor 
with that man as I often wished since that I had. I wish 
that night I had prayed more earnestly with him. He 
came back the next night, and the next night, and the next 
night, and the Spirit of God strove with him for weeks. It 
seemed as if he came to the very threshold of Heaven, and 
was almost stepping over into the blessed world. I never 
could find out any reason for this hesitation except that he 
feared his old companions would laugh at him. I notice 
that when men go to prison no one laughs at them, but 
when they come out and declare their intention of leading 
good lives and standing up for Jesus, the men laugh at 
them and make sport of them. 

Well, I thought surely this man would be brought into 
the fold, but at last the spirit of God seemed to leave him ; 
conviction was gone, and then after that when he used to 
meet me on the street he used to shun me, and if I met 
him coming along the same side of the street he would 
cross over to the other side and dodge me in every way he 
could. He finally got so that he didn't come to church 
on the Sabbath. He always used to come before. And 
that is the fault some people find with these meetings. 
They say it hardens people. Yes, it does harden some 
people. Any man that goes through a special meeting 
like this and rejects the gospel, of course becomes hardened, 
and his chances are much less for heaven. The things 
that formerly moved them do not move them so readily 



260 GLAD TIDINGS. 

the next time. It hardens a great many. It hardened 
this man. Six months from that time I got a message 
from him that he was sick and wanted to see me. I went 
to him in great haste. He was very sick and thought he 
was dying. He asked me if there was any hope. Yes, I 
told him, God had sent Christ to save him, and I prayed 
with him. Contrary to all expectations and to the belief of 
the physicians, he recovered and got off from his sick bed. 
One day I went down to see him. It was a bright, beauti- 
ful day, and he was sitting out in front of his house conva- 
lescing rapidly, and I said " You are coming out for God 
now, aren't you ? You will be well enough soon to come 
back to our meetings again ? " Said he, " Mr. Moody, I 
have made up my mind to become a Christian. My mind 
is fully made up to that, but I won't be one just now. I 
am going to Michigan to buy a farm and settle down, and 
then I will become a Christian." Said I, " But you don't 
know yet that you will get well." " Oh," said he, " I will 
be perfectly well in a few days. I'll risk it. I have got a 
new lease of life. " Oh," said I, "it seems to me that you 
are tempting God," and I pleaded with him, and tried 
every way to get him to take his stand. At last said he» 
" Mr. Moody, I can't be a Christian in Chicago. When I 
get away from Chicago, and get to Michigan, away from 
my friends and acquaintances, who laugh at me, I will be 
ready to go to Christ." Said I, " If God has not got grace 
enough to save you in Chicago, He has not in Michigan ; " 
and I preached Christ to him, and urged Christ upon him. 
At last he got a little irritated, and said, " Mr. Moody, you 
can just attend to your business, and I will to mine, and if 
I lose my soul, no one will be to blame but myself — cer- 
tainly not you, for you have done all you could." I went 
away from that house then with a heavy heart. 

I well remember the day of the week, Thursday, about 
noon, just one week from that very day, when I was sent 






RE TRIB UTION. 2 6 r 

for by his wife to come in great haste. I hurried there at 
once. His poor wife met me at the door, and I asked her 
what was the matter. " My husband," she said, " has 
been taken down with the same disease, and I have just 
had a council of physicians here, and they have all given 
him up to die." Said I, " does he want to see me ? " 
" No," said she. "Then why did you send for me ? " Said 
she, "I cannot bear to see him die in this terrible state of 
mind." "What does he say ?".. I asked. Said she. "He 
says his damnation is sealed and he will be in hell in a 
little while." I went in, and he at once fixed his eye upon 
me. I called him by name, but he was speechless.' I 
went around to the foot of the bed and looked in his face 
and said, " Won't you speak to me ? " and at last he fixed 
that terrible deathly look upon me and said, " Mr. Moody, 
you need not talk to me any more. It is too late. You 
can talk to my wife and children ; pray for them ; but my 
heart is as hard as the iron in that stove there. My dam- 
nation is sealed, and I will be in hell in a little while." I 
tried to tell him of Jesus's love and of God's forgiveness, 
but he said, " Mr. Moody, don't you mock me. I tell you 
there is no hope for me." And as I fell on my knees he 
said, " You need not pray for me ; you need not pray for a 
lost soul. My wife will soon be left a widow and my 
children will be fatherless. They need your prayers, but 
you need not pray for me." I tried to pray, but it seemed 
as if my prayers didn't go higher than my head, and as if 
the heaven above me was like brass. As I took the cold, 
clammy hand the sweat of death was upon it, and it seemed 
like bidding farewell to a man I should never see in time 
or eternity. I left him with a broken heart. That was 
about noon. The next day his wife told me he lingered 
until the sun went down behind those Western prairies, 
and from noon until he died all he was heard to say was, 
"The harvest is past, the Summer is ended, and I am not 



262 GLAD TIDINGS. 

saved." After lingering along an hour, he would say again 
those words, and just as he was expiring, his wife noticed 
his lips quiver, and that he was trying to say something, 
and as she bent over him she heard him mutter, " The 
harvest is past, the Summer is ended, and I am not saved," 
and the angels bore him away to judgment. He lived a 
Christless life ; he died a Christless death ; we wrapped 
him in a Christless shroud and bore him away to a Christ- 
less grave. Oh, how dark and sad ! 

Are there some here that are almost persuaded to be 
Christians ? Take my advice and not let anything keep 
you away. Fly to the arms of Jesus this day and hour. 
You can be saved if you will. Son, remember ! I have 
warned you to-day. Daughter, remember ! you cannot say 
that I did not lift up a warning voice to-day and exhort 
you with all my soul, to escape the damnation of hell. 






WHAT SEEK YE? 



There are two things I want to call your attention to 
this afternoon. The first is in the words of the ist chapter 
of John, 40th verse, and the second is in the 6th chapter 
of Matthew, 33rd verse. The first text is the first words 
that fell from the lips of Christ at the commencement of 
His ministry. It was the question He put to those two 
disciples that came and questioned Him as to where He 
dwelt. One afternoon, about four o'clock, John the Bap- 
tist stood with two of his disciples, and Jesus of Nazareth 
was passing by, a little way off, and John lifted up his hand 
and pointed to the man off in the distance and said : " Be- 
hold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the 
world ! " and John the beloved disciple, and Andrew left 
their old master and went together toward Jesus, and 
Jesus turned around as they came up to Him and said : 
" What seek ye ? " I thought this afternoon I would like 
for a few moments to call your attention to that text and 
press that question home upon the people here. I would 
like to have all of you ask yourselves the questions. What 
are you seeking ? What did you "come for — what motive 
brought you here this afternoon ? What do these great 
crowds of people here mean, day after day, week after 
week? 

There were all classes of people seeking for Christ, and 
they had every kind of motive for seeking Him. There 



264 GLAD TIDINGS. 

were some who came out of curiosity, just to see what 
would happen. There was another class who came to Him 
just because they had friends that were diseased, and they 
wanted their friends to be healed and blessed. There was 
the class who came with the hope of getting the loaves and 
fishes. And there was still another class that were trying 
to murder Him and to get Him out of the way; they were 
watching Him and striving to get Him into some conversa- 
tion in which they might entangle Him with His words and so 
get an excuse to bring Him before the Sanhedrim, and cause 
Him to be called guilty of blasphemy and punished. Some 
sought Him for what they could get, and others sought Him 
for what He was ; and that is the class we are after, 
namely, those who are not seeking Christ for what they 
can get, but who are seeking Him for what He is person- 
ally. I have no doubt but that a great many of the disci- 
ples at first sought Him in order to be identified with Him, 
because they thought He would set up an earthly kingdom, 
aud establish His throne upon earth. Judas perhaps 
thought so, and that he might become the chief treasurer 
of such a kingdom ; and perhaps Peter thought that he 
might become the chief secretary ; and when the sons of 
Zebedee found out that it was a spiritual kingdom that He 
was to establish, their mother came and asked of Christ 
that her sons might be placed the one upon His right hand 
and the other upon His left. All the time during His 
ministry Christ constantly, found men seeking for office 
and honor ; and that is precisely the spirit to-day. One 
of our greatest troubles,*and one great reason why we do 
not get greater blessings from God, is because we are not 
pure in our motives for seeking Him. I say there is not a 
man or a woman (and I see they are nearly all women here 
to-day) who has come here for a blessing from God, and 
who had that motive, but will get it. Others will go away 
without any blessing and with hearts as hard and cold as 



WHA T SEEK YE ? ? 6 ' 

ever. Why ? Because they have not come to get a bles- 
sing. 

I would like to ask you to take this brief question home 
to your hearts to-day, " What seek ye ? " What are you 
after this afternoon ? What motive brought you to this 
place ? I think one would say, " I came because some 
friends of mine were coming ; I did not have any particu- 
lar motive at all ; I came because my friends asked me to 
come." I ask another, What did you come for ? " Well, 
I came to see the crowd ; I heard there were a great many 
men and women here, and I thought it would be a wonder- 
ful sight to see so many together." A man told me the 
other day that he came to see the chairs. He said he 
heard there were ten thousand chairs all in one hall, and 
he thought they must look so strange. He had a curiosity 
to see them. Thank God, that man got caught in the 
Gospel net that very night, and I hope some others that 
come just out of curiosity this afternoon will get caught 
with the old Gospel net. But to return to our question, 
What brought you here ? A lady over there says, " I came 
to hear the singing, I don't care anything about the preach- 
ing. I have heard the Word preached till I am tired of it, 
and if I had my way about it I would rather get up and go 
out as soon as the singing is over." But if any of you 
have come here with such motives, and will change your 
minds after you get here, and will seek to come to God to- 
day, you will find him, whatever your motive was at first in 
coming. You may even have come here to make sport of 
the meeting ; you may have come here to ridicule every- 
thing you should hear, but if you will repent and change 
your mind the Lord Jesus will bless you to-day, and forgive 
you, and this may be the best meeting you ever was at in 
your life if you will. 

Now I want to call your attention to the other text I 
spoke of. My text is both a question and a command. 



266 GLAD TIDINGS. 

The question is, "What seek ye?" and the command is 
this, " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His right- 
eousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." 
This is just as much a command as that is, that you shall 
not steal. It is just as much a command for us to seek 
the kingdom of God and His righteousness as it is a com- 
mand that we shall not swear. It is one of the commands 
of the Bible. Jesus, when He was down here, in that 
memorable Sermon on the Mount, said : " Seek first the 
Kingdom of God." That was to come first ; it was to come 
in ahead of everything else. The Master's ways are not 
our ways. God's thoughts are not our thoughts. What we 
put last God puts first; what we put first He puts last; 
the whole thing is reversed. We say we do not want to 
seek the Kingdom of God first. We have a good many 
things that must be attended to before we seek the King- 
dom of God. I know if persons think they would like to 
be converted they always think they have some prepara- 
tions to make beforehand. Now, this is just as much a 
command to-day as it was so many hundreds of years ago. 
Do you think if He was on earth to-day He would alter 
that command ? Do you think He would say for you to 
put off your salvation for one hour ? Do you think He 
would tell you to seek His Kingdom at some future time ? 
Every day we here of persons dying suddenly, sometimes 
without God and without hope, because they have not 
obeyed this command to seek first the Kingdom of God. 
One reason that people do not seek first the Kingdom of 
God is this : that they do not believe that God is real, and 
that He has a Kingdom, and that they can find Him ; but 
they make light of the existence of His Kingdom. The 
whole living world is seeking for something. There is not 
a person in this world who is not seeking for something. 
Then why not seek for the best things ? If people will so 
seek for temporal things, doesn't it serve to show that you 



WHA T SEEK YE? 267 

do not believe that God is real, or else you would seek first 
the Kingdom of God, and find it before any of these other 
things ? 

I heard some time ago of a young man who wanted to 
become a Christian. His father was a worldly man, full of 
ambition and a desire to get on. His son went to him 
and told him his wish. The father turned around in as- 
tonishment, put on a dissatisfied look, and said : " My 
son, you have made a mistake. You had better wait until 
you get established in business ; wait till you get older ; 
better wait till you make some money ; there is plenty of 
time yet to become a Christian." Does any young man 
here believe that ? You know what the rich man in the 
Scripture said and did. That man had got well on in 
business : he had made lots of money ; his goods were in- 
creasing every year. At last, after an unusually plentiful 
harvest, he found he had to build more barns and store- 
houses. He felt sure of being able to enjoy himself; he 
was happy and contented as he thought how his bank ac- 
count was swelling. " Soul, take thine ease ; thou hast 
much goods laid up for many days." He never thought of 
the future ; the present was all he cared anything about. 
But in his fancied security he heard the dread and start- 
ling summons, " Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be re- 
quired of thee." He had to leave all these things behind 
him • death snatched him away, and he lost the heaven he 
had neglected to make sure of on earth. 

I heard a story of a young lady who was deeply con- 
cerned about her soul. Her father and mother, however, 
were worldly people. They thought lightly of her serious 
wishes ; they did not sympathize with her state of mind. 
They made up their minds that she should not become a 
Christian, and tried every way they could to discourage 
her notions about religion. At last they thought they 
would get up a large party, and thus with gayety and 



268 GLAD TIDINGS. 

pleasure win her back to the world. So they made every 
preparation for a gay time ; they even sent to neighboring 
towns and got all her most worldly companions to come to 
the house ; they bought her a magnificent silk dress and 
jewelry, and decked her out in all the finery of such an oc- 
casion. The young lady thought there would be no harm 
in attending the party • that it would be a trifling affair, a 
simple thing, and she could, after it was over, think again 
of the welfare of her soul. She went decked out in all her 
adornments, and was the belle of the ball. Three weeks 
from that night she was on her dying bed. She asked her 
mother to bring her ball dress in. She pointed her finger 
at it, and, bursting into tears said, " That is the price of 
my soul." She died before the dawn. Oh, my friends, if 
you are anxious about your soul, let everything else go ; 
let parties and festivals pass. Seek ye first the Kingdom 
of God ; then all these things will be added unto you. God 
commands you to do it. If you are lost — if you die in 
your sin — whose fault is it ? God has commanded you to 
repent and to seek salvation at once. 

Are any of you going to take the responsibility of put- 
ting it off ? You complain because Christ is urged upon you ; 
you complain because your friends are anxious about you. 
How can they be otherwise than anxious. You heard what 
Mr. Sankey said a little while ago about the death of a hus- 
band of one of our choir. This morning, while I was 
preaching, he passed away. We prayed for him at the 
opening, and again at the close of that service, but he was 
gone before we got through. Three of the ushers have 
been taken away since I have been preaching here. When 
I got up here to preach this afternoon, I said to myself : 
" Perhaps it is my turn next." But, thank God, I have an 
interest up yonder. I can read my title clear there. I 
have sought and found Christ. But on the other hand, 
see how people go on day by day and year by year and dis- 



WHA T SEEK YE? 269 

obey the command of God. They say there is plenty of 
time. Why, you hear every day of wills being upset because 
the man's mind was proved not to be clear when he made 
the will on his death-bed. If his mind is not clear enough 
when he is dying to settle his little affairs here below, is 
that a time to repent and make provision for eternity ? Is it 
the time, when we are racked with pain and tortured with 
anguish, to turn our hearts to God ? Is that a time to begin 
to think of salvation ? Is it right or honorable to give the 
dregs of a wasted and misspent life to God ? I tell you I 
have not much faith in death-bed repentances. I do 
not limit the power and mercy of God, but I do not 
believe in them. If there is one out of a thousand 
that are saved, there are nine hundred and ninety-nine 
that are lost. They think that they repent then, but 
they are scared and terrified ; it is not repentance, it 
is fear ; when they get better, they go right back again to 
their wicked ways. We cannot scare people into repent- 
ance ; they must be born in, not be scared in. Let us rea- 
son for a moment. Suppose, you ask the advice of a friend 
on the earth as to whether you had not better repent now. 
While I am preaching, young lady, just ask your mother 
sitting beside you what you had better do. Whisper to 
her — I'll excuse you — ask her if you had not better seek the 
kingdom of God now. Young lady, there is not one in the 
wide, wide world who loves you as your mother. Would 
she not advise you to accept Christ. Now just ask her. 
Most of those who are not Christians will advise you to 
seek the kingdom of God now, this very minute. If I go 
up yonder and ask them in heaven, every one there would 
tell you to seek the kingdom now. Paul for three years 
preached upon immediate repentance. He besought his 
hearers with tears to turn from their sins and be saved. 
" Behold, now is the accepted time." That was what he 
preached. Yes, I leave heaven and earth and go down to 



270 GLAD TIDINGS. 

the very borders of hell, and will ask them there if it is not 
better to repent now. They would all with one voice 
answer " Yes, yes, yes." The only time we ever heard 
from that place was to have a young man implore that word 
might be sent to his father's house that his brothers there 
might be warned against neglecting salvation. Yes, the 
lost ones would tell you to escape and seek the Kingdom of 
God and be saved. Why, then, heaven, earth and hell all 
unite in warning you to seek the Kingdom of God. Why 
will you not do it, then ? Why not accept Christ this very 
day ? Just think what will become of you if you do not. 

When the Lawrence Mills were on fire a number of years 
ago — I don't mean on fire, but when the mill fell in — the 
great mill fell in, and after it had fallen in, the ruins caught 
fire. There was only one room left entire, and in it were 
three Mission Sunday-school children imprisoned. The 
neighbors and all hands got their shovels and picks and 
crowbars, and were working to set the children free. It 
came on night and they had not yet reached the children. 
When they were near them, by some mischance a lantern 
broke, and the ruins caught fire. They tried to put it 
out, but they could not succeed. They could talk with the 
children, and even pass to them some hot coffee and some 
refreshments, and encouraged them to keep up. But, alas, 
the flames drew nearer and nearer to this prison. Super- 
human were the efforts made to rescue the children • the 
men bravely fought back the flames ; but the fire gained 
fresh strength and returned to claim its victims. Then 
piercing shrieks arouse when the spectators saw that the 
efforts of the firemen were hopeless. The children saw 
their fate. They then knelt down and commenced to sing 
the little hymn we have all been taught in our Sunday- 
school days : " Oh ! how sweet — let others seek a home 
below which flames devour and waves overflow." The 
flames had now reached them ; the stifling smoke began 



WHA T SEEK YE? 271 

to pour into their little room, and they began to sink, one 
by one, upon the floor. A few moments more and the fire 
circled around them and their souls were taken into the 
bosom of Christ. Yes, let others seek a home below if 
they will, but see ye the Kingdom of God with all your 
hearts. 

When I was a young man, before I left my native town, 
I was at work in the field one day in company with a man, 
a neighbor of mine. All at once I saw him begin to weep. 
I asked him what the trouble was. He then told me a 
strange story — stange to me then, for I was not at that 
time a Christian. He said that his mother was a Christian 
when he left home to seek his fortune. When he was about 
starting his mother took him by the hand and spoke these 
parting words. " My son, seek ye first the Kingdom of God 
and His righteousness, and all things else shall be added 
unto thee." " This," said he, " was my mother's favorite 
text." When he got into the town to which he was going, 
he had to spend the Sabbath there. He went to church, 
and the minister took this very text — " Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God." He thought it very strange. Well, he 
said he would not seek the kingdom then, he would wait 
until h« got a start in life — until he got a farm and some 
money. Yet that text troubled him. Again he went to 
church, and to his amazement the sermon was on that very 
same text. He did not attend church for some time. At 
last he was induced again to enter the church, and behold ! 
he heard the preacher take that very same text. He 
thought then it was God speaking to him ; that his mother's 
prayers were being answered. But he coolly, calmly, and 
deliberately made up his mind that he would not be a 
Christian. " I have never heard any sermon that has 
made any impression on me since." I was not a Christian 
myself, so I didn't know how to talk to him. The time 
came for me to leave home. I went to Boston, and there 



272 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



I became a convert. When I got to be a Christian the 
first thing that came into my mind was that man. I made 
up my mind to try to bring him to Christ. When I came 
home I mentioned the name to my mother and asked if he 
was living. "Is he living?" she exclaimed; "didn't I 
write to you about him?" "Write me what?" "Why 
that he had gone out of his mind and is now in the insane 
asylum." When I got up there he pointed his finger at me ; 
says he, " Young man, ' seek ye first the kingdom of God.' " 
He had never forgotten the text. Although his mind was 
shattered and gone, the text was there. 

My friends, do let that man speak to you. He is gone 
now. How much better it would have been for him to 
have followed his mother's prayer. The spirit of God 
may be striving with some one to-day. I may be standing 
here for the last time. Let me plead with you once more 
to seek the kingdom of God, and seek it with all your 
hearts. 



THE HOLY GHOST. I. 



I remember once when I was first converted I spoke in 
a Sabbath school, and there seemed to be a great deal of 
interest and quite a number rose for prayer, and I remember 
I went out quite rejoiced ; but an old man followed me 
out — I have never seen him since. I never had seen him 
before, and don't even know his name — but he caught hold 
of my hand and gave me a little bit of advice. I didn't 
know what he meant at the time, but he said, " Young 
man, when you speak again, honor the Holy Ghost." I 
was hastening off to another church to speak, and all the 
way over it kept ringing in my ears — " Honor the Holy 
Ghost," and I said to myself, " I wonder what the old man 
means." I have found out since what he meant, and I 
think that all that have been to work in the vineyard of 
the Lord have learnt that lesson that, if we honor Him in 
our efforts to do good, He will honor us and work through 
us ; but if we don't honor Him, we will surely break down. 
The only work that is going to stand to eternity is the 
work done by the Holy Ghost, and not by any one of us. 
We maybe used as His instruments, but the work that will 
stand to eternity is that done by the Holy Ghost ; and 
every conversation in these meetings, that is not by the 
power of the Holy Ghost will not stand. They may be 
impressions that may last for a few weeks or months, but 
then they will pass away like the morning cloud ; and I 
18 



274 GLAD TIDINGS. 

firmly believe that if a man or woman be not converted by 
the Holy Ghost, we will not see them in Heaven. 

But I want now to call your attention to the Holy 
Ghost as a person. He has been in the world ever since 
man has been in it. We are told here in the second Epis- 
tle of Peter, first chapter and twenty-first verse : " For the 
prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but 
holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost." Every holy man that has ever spoken in this 
world has been inspired and prompted by the Holy Ghost, 
and has been moved by the Holy Ghost to speak, and if 
he has not been so moved the words are just like the 
clouds, they will soon be gone and be of no permanent 
effect. They won't last ; but the words that abide and 
live forever are the words prompted by the Holy Ghost, or 
accompanied by the Holy Ghost. Now I want to call your 
attention to an important truth, because I really believe I 
was a Christian ten years before I believed it. I went into 
a church once and heard an old minister say that the Holy 
Ghost was a person. I thought the old man was wrong, 
and could not believe that the Holy Ghost was a person. 
I did not know my Bible then as well as I do now, but I 
went home and got my Bible and went to work to study 
it out, and have been thoroughly convinced ever since that 
the Holy Ghost is a person as much as God the Father is, 
and as much as Jesus Christ the Son is. Some may say 
that it is a mystery, and there are a good many things that 
are mysterious on their face. Now turn to the 14th Chap- 
ter of John, 1 6th and 17th verses : "And I will pray the 
Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He 
may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of Truth, 
whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him not, 
neither knoweth Him ; but ye know Him, for he dwelleth 
with you and shall be in you." 

Now, if the Holy Ghost were not a person, Christ 



THE HOLY GHOST. I. 275 

would not have said, " Who." To be sure He is a spirit, 
but at the same time He is a person, the same as God the 
Father is. God is a spirit, and yet He is a person. Three 
times in this last verse it says " Him," and once " Who." 
Then in the 26th verse of the same chapter: "But the 
Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will 
send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring 
all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said 
unto you," He shall do it. Then there are a good many 
other verses, and I want to call your attention to one or 
two more, just to show this fact, that He is a person. 
Whenever Christ spoke of the Holy Ghost He always 
spoke of Him as " He " or " Him," and we won't honor 
the Holy Ghost unless we make Him a person, and one 
of the persons of the Trinity — the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. 

When Christ got ready to go away He taught His dis- 
ciples to baptize the people in the name of the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost. Now, not only that, but we get life 
through Him. It is through the Holy Ghost that we get 
life. We would in reality not know Christ but for the 
Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost that imparts life. We 
must be bom of the Spirit — that is, love. Not only that, 
but if we turn over to Peter, First Epistle, 3d chapter and 
1 8th verse, we will find that Christ was raised by the power 
of the Holy Ghost : " For Christ also hath once suffered 
for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us- to 
God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the 
Spirit ; " and every dead soul that has been brought to life 
has been brought to life by the power of the Holy Ghost. 
They are dead in sin until the Holy Ghost brings them to 
life, until the Spirit of God moves upon the waters. There 
is no life or power for a man to serve God until he is first 
born of the Spirit, until he has been quickened by the 
Holy Ghost, until he has been raised as Christ's dead body 



276 GLAD TIDINGS. 

was raised. So dead souls must be raised, and when they 
have been raised by that power then they can serve God. 

Now the work of the Holy Ghost is also to impart 
love. Just turn to Romans, v., 5 : " And hope maketh not 
ashamed ; because the love of God is shed abroad in our 
hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us." The 
real fruit that we look for in a young convert is love ; and 
I think it is one of the strongest proofs that this religion 
of Jesus Christ is divine, that it is the same all the world 
over. Even in the heart of China you will find if a man is 
converted he will love his enemies. The love of God is in 
that man's heart. What do we as Christians feel and want 
to-day ? What is the great lack of the church ? Why are 
so many complaining about the coldness of the church ? It 
is because we have not got this love. If the Holy Ghost 
is a power in the church, shedding abroad love in our 
hearts, there won't be any complaint. Go into a society 
of young converts. If you could have been in our meet- 
ings last night you would have seen love and joy in every 
face except a few inquiring ones. They all tell the same 
story. They were of different nationalities perhaps, but 
they had only one story to relate. They loved every one, 
and told how much love and pity they felt for all. And if 
a man gets up and talks bitterly against any one, and pro- 
fesses to be a young convert, you may believe it is a spu- 
rious conversion. It is a counterfeit. It has not got the 
ring of Heaven in it because a man when he is converted 
will love every one. Not only that, but I have noticed 
this, that when a man is full of the Holy Ghost he is the 
very last man to be complaining of other people. He loves 
every body too tenderly. He loves even a cold church, 
and is anxious to lift them up and bring them to a kinder 
feeling and sympathy. And I want to say here that I 
think a good many people have gotten into this habit of cold- 
ness. A man told me the other day that he felt it to be his 



THE HOLY GHOST. I. 277 

duty to go up to a certain church and open on them when 
he got a chance for their lukewarmness, and I thought if he 
could just get a look at these young converts here he would 
feel differently. For when a man is himself cold, he looks 
upon everybody else as cold too. When a man is himself 
warm, he will talk about everybody else in the same view 
as of himself ; he will talk about the love of God that is in 
our hearts, and that is what we want. If we only just 
felt filled with love, how easy it would be to reach man ! All 
these barriers between us would be broken down. If you 
can only convince the greatest blasphemer and infidel in 
New York that you really love him you can reach him. 
What we want, therefore, is this love, and that is the work 
of the Holy Ghost to impart ; and let us pray to-day that 
the love of God may be shed abroad in all our hearts. 

The Holy Ghost not only imparts love, too, but hope. 
That is another thing the church wants — more hope. 
When a church is hopeful, then the work advances ; when 
it is discouraged and disheartened, the work does not ad- 
vance ; and I have learned this, that the hopeful Christians 
that are all the time looking on the bright side are the 
very ones that God delights to honor by using as His in- 
struments, while He never employs for His best work 
those who are always looking on the dark side. Let the 
Holy Ghost come into a church and convert a few, impart- 
ing the hope that it does impart, and see how the work of 
the church will suddenly go on. If you will only let Jesus 
Christ come into the church, He will do the work well. 
The trouble is we want our own way. We want the Holy 
Ghost to work in our way, and if he doesn't come in that 
way we think sometimes it is not the work of God because 
it has not come in the usual way. My grandfather told me 
in his day there was a great revival and every one came to 
the anxious bench, "but now they don't do so," said he, 
" and I don't believe it is the work of God." That is the 



27S GLAD TIDINGS. 

way a great many talk. God never repeats Himself. Be- 
cause God did a certain thing through one instrument at 
one time, it is no sign that he will do it the same way all 
the time. What we want to do is to let the* Holy Ghost 
work in his own way and He will impart hope, and the 
Holy Ghost is very hopeful the moment He gets in. 

Another thing we want in the church is liberty. If you 
had been to that young converts' meeting last night you 
would have seen perfect liberty — three or four trying to 
get the floor at once." There was no trouble in speaking 
there. But go into some of our churches, and where is 
that essential liberty ? A great many Christians are like 
Lazarus when he came forth — he was bound hand and 
foot ; but Christ said, " Loose him and let him go." And 
so Christians want to feel that liberty they should feel when 
Christ calls them to be His disciples. Where the spirit of 
the Lord is there is liberty. Many think to themselves be- 
fore they get up to speak : " Now, what will Mrs. B say 
when I get up if I don't talk as well as the minister ? " and 
" Oh, if I could speak as well as Brother A, wouldn't I give 
my testimony quickly ! but I haven't got any eloquence, 
and cannot speak like, an orator." Don't you know my 
friend, it is not the most fluent man that has the greatest 
effect with a jury ? It is the man who tells the truth. And 
in speaking of your experience God will help you if you 
trust in Him, and you will find after a simple trial that you 
have perfect liberty. The trouble is we have a great many 
Christians who have only got as far as the 3d chapter of 
John, and so far as liberty to come out and speak up for 
God is concerned, they don't know anything about it. We 
want this spirit of liberty so as to be qualified for God's 
work. A friend of mine told me once that when he went 
to a boarding-house he could always tell who the boarders 
were, for they never alluded to family matters, but sat 
down to the table and talked of outside matters, but when 



THE HOLY GHOST. I. 279 

the son came in he would go into the sitting-room to see if 
there were any letters and inquire after the family, and 
show in many ways his interest in the household. It 
doesn't take five minutes to tell that he is not a boarder 
and that the others are. And so it is with the Church of 
God. You see these boarders in church every Sunday 
morning, but they don't take any interest. They come to 
criticise, and that is about all that constitutes a Christian 
now-a-days. They are boarders in the house of God, and 
we have got too many boarders. What we want is liberty. 
A friend of mine said he was down in Natchez before 
the war, and he and a friend of his went out riding one 
Saturday — they were teaching school through the week — 
and they drove out back from Natchez. It was a beauti- 
ful day, and they saw an old slave coming up, and they 
thought they would have a little fun. They had just come 
to a place where there was a fork in the roads, and there 
was a sign-post which read, " 40 miles to Liberty." One 
of the young men said to the old darkey driver, " Sambo, 
how old are you ?" " I don't know, massa. I guess I'se 
about eighty." " Can you read ? " " No, sah ; we don't 
read in this country. It's agin the law." " Can you tell 
what is on that sign-post ? " " Yes, Sah ; it says ' 40 miles 
to Liberty.' " " Well, now," said my friend, " why don't 
you follow that road and get your liberty. It says there, 
• Only 40 miles to Liberty.' Now, why don't you take that 
road and go there ? " The old man's countenance changed, 
and he said, " Oh ! young massa, that is all a sham. If 
that post_ pointed out the road to the liberty that God 
gives, we might try it. There could be no sham in that." 
My friend said he had never heard anything more elo- 
quent trom the lips of any preacher. God wants all his 
sons to have liberty. He does not want us bound, as so 
many of us are bound, by a sort of fear. The Holy Ghost 
casts out fear. It is the Spirit of Love and Liberty 7 . There 



2 8o GLAD TIDINGS. 

ought to be perfect liberty in all our religious meetings, in 
all our social meetings. If there were, how long would it 
be before there would be a wonderful reformation in this 
country if these all had this spirit of liberty ? A friend of 
mine asked a judge in his church to go out to a school- 
house in the country with him one day, where he was going 
to preach. He said to the judge that he would like to 
have him go, and the judge said he would like to go along. 
He told the judge he would like to have him speak to the 
people. The judge said, " Oh, I could not do that." "Why 
can't you ? You can speak in your court well enough, 
without any trouble. Why cannot you speak here ? Sup- 
pose you just try it." When they got out there the judge 
refused to do it, but the minister said, " I want to put the 
judge into the witness box and question him." And the 
judge got his lips open at last and told how he was con- 
verted, and how the Spirit of God came down upon him. 
And there was a mighty power in what he said, and the re- 
sult was that many were converted ; and the judge has 
been a working Christian ever since. I think there are 
hundreds bound, as he was, by station. A man who had 
been a professing Christian for three years I met at a 
meeting, and I knew he had been a professing Christian, 
and I supposed of course he had prayed in public. I no- 
ticed that he hesitated when I asked him, but he rose, and 
as soon as he had opened his lips the words came easily. 
I heard him tell a friend afterward that that night he felt as 
if he had been converted a second time. How many there 
are in the church that are bound to silence by long habit 
and that have not yet got their liberty ! And one reason 
is because you do not ask God for it. Oh, open your lips 
and the Spirit of God will come upon you, and you will 
have liberty. 

There are so many people who are just between the 
two beliefs, or between belief and unbelief. I pity that 



THE HOLY GHOST. /. 28 1 

class of people. What God wants is for us to have perfect 
liberty. Where the Spirit of the Lord is you will have 
this liberty. I want to call your attention to this fact. 
What is the work of the Holy Ghost ? Why is it that when 
the Holy Ghost wakes up some men they get so angry ? 
Because the Holy Ghost testifies against the world. That 
is what he has come to do — to convince men of their sins. 
It is a good sign sometimes to see a man get mad and 
storm out of the house. A man went out of this building 
so a few days ago, but he did not rest in it; he found 
Christ soon after. When the spirit of God wakes some 
men up they wake up in anger. I want to read the 7th 
verse of the 16th chapter of John : " Nevertheless, I tell 
you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away, for 
if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; 
but if I depart I will send Him unto you. And when He 
is come He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteous- 
ness, and of judgment." I do not believe a man was ever 
convicted of sin by any preacher in the world. It is the 
work of the Holy Ghost. If He does not do it they won't 
be converted. 

It would be very easy for the Holy Ghost to convict 
every man here of sin. Then shall we not ask Him to do 
it ? All that He has to do is to open a man's eyes and he 
will see at once that he is a sinner. When the Holy Ghost 
opens a man's eyes he will soon find out what a miserable 
sinner he is. The work of the Holy Ghost is to testify of 
Christ ; He comes for thai purpose. I believe the world 
would have forgotten Christ's death as soon as they forgot 
His birth, if it had not been for the Holy Ghost. It had 
only been thirty years since His birth and all those won- 
derful scenes had happened in Bethlehem, and it was well 
known in Jerusalem ; yet it seems to have been forgotten 
mtil Christ came. And they would have forgotten His 
leath if it had not been for the Holy Ghost. He came to 



2 8 2 GLAD TIDINGS. 

testify for Jesus Christ that He had risen. He saw Him 
in heaven, and He came to tell us He was there at the right 
hand of God. He convinced men on the day of Pentecost, 
three thousand of them. He does not talk of Himself, but 
of Christ. In the 15th chapter of John, the 26th verse, it 
says : " But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send 
unto you from the p Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which 
proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me." If a 
man preaches Christ faithfully the Holy Ghost will bless 
his preaching, because he will testify and carry home the 
truth. He knows that Christ has risen and is sitting at 
the right hand of God, and has been raised for our justifi- 
cation. Do you believe, my friends, that He who died out- 
side of the walls of Jerusalem the death of a common 
prisoner, the cruel death of the cross, do you believe that 
the preaching of that man after it had taken place would 
have had any power over this audience, except for the 
Holy Ghost ? 

Some people do not believe in the supernatural work- 
ing of the Holy Ghost and the supernatural power of His 
influence. Every man and every woman has felt the power 
of the Holy Ghost. When the Holy Ghost first opened 
my eyes, I thought how blind I had been ! That is the 
way with the world now ; it is blind, but does not know it. 
He came into the world that the blind might see and 
recover. And the world is deaf, but does not know it- 
And so the world turns around and says people go mad on 
the subject of religion. When people are mad they think 
every one else is. I think it would take but a few minutes 
to prove that the world had gone clean crazy. The Holy 
Ghost is our teacher. He will teach us and show us things 
to come. He comes to speak of Christ, not of Himself. 
A man came to me the other day and said he was going 
down to Florida, where my wife and family are, and 
wanted to know if I had any message to send. Well, I 



THE HOLY GHOST. I. 283 

sent them a message ; but suppose when that man went 
down there he should go and see my wife and should 
begin and talk about himself, and not say a word about 
me. That would not cheer their hearts ; they would want 
to hear about me. That would make their hearts warm. 
The Holy Ghost teaches us this lesson of self-forgetful- 
ness. Every one of us Christians wants more of the Holy 
Ghost. Let us all give ourselves up to the influence of 
His spirit, who will lead us on to liberty and life and peace 
and joy 



THE HOLY GHOST. II. 



I want to follow up the subject we had yesterday after- 
noon, and the first thought I want to call your attention to 
is, What is the sin against the Holy Ghost ? Nearly every 
day we have somebody coming into the .inquiry room very 
much discouraged and disheartened and cast down because 
they think they have committed a sin against the Holy 
Ghost, and that there is no hope for them : that they have 
blasphemed against the Holy Ghost. Now let us just turn 
to the Scripture and see what that sin is — and I ask you to 
turn to Matthew xii., beginning at the 24th verse. 

Here Mr. Moody read long extracts from the chapter 
referred to, and added a few verses from the third chapter 
of St. Mark, beginning at the 23d verse : " And He called 
them unto Him and said unto them in parables, How can 
Satan cast out Satan," &c. Now the next verse throws a 
flood of light upon all this subject. People are running 
off after books, and they are running after this and that 
minister to ask them if they have not committed the unpar- 
donable sin. Just let me read this verse : " Because "— 
now Christ gives a reason — " because they said, he hath an 
unclean spirit." I don't know but there are men living who 
have committed the unpardonable sin, but I have never met 
one. I never heard of a man who thought the Lord Jesus 
Christ cast out devils by the power of the devil. I never 

met a man who thought the Holy Ghost was a devil, and it 
284 






THE HOLY GHOST. II. 285 

is a question in my mind if there is any man in this city 
who has committed an unpardonable sin against the Holy 
Ghost. If you say you have resisted the Holy Ghost, well 
we have all of us done that I think. Ah, how we resisted 
until we hadn't any more strength and could not resist any 
longer ; and then just simply accepted of Christ. A man 
may die in his sins resisting the Holy Ghost. I don't re- 
member of ever hearing any man swear in my life by the 
Holy Ghost, except once, and then I looked upon him ex- 
pecting him to fall dead, and my blood ran cold when I 
heard him. I have heard a great many profane men, and 
have travelled considerably, but I have never met only this 
man who swore by the Holy Ghost. 

Now, if any here have said that Christ was possessed 
by the devil, and that He cast out devils by the power of 
the devil, and have blasphemed the power of the Holy 
Ghost in that way, then it may be you have committed that 
sin ; but I never met any one. But I can hear some of you 
saying, " I have blasphemous thoughts ; they come flitting 
into my mind." Well many of the best Christian people 
in the world have them. I have met men very eminent in 
the service of God who have these thoughts come upon 
them, but they don't harbor or entertain them ; they drive 
them off. That is Satan. No doubt but that we all have 
these thoughts in our mind, but if we don't entertain them, 
but drive them off, we don't sin. The sin is in harboring 
and entertaining them. 

Let me call your attention to another thought — that we 
are sealed by the Holy Ghost. We are washed and cleansed 
by the blood, and when a soul is washed and cleansed by 
the precious blood of Christ, then it becomes a temple for 
the Holy Ghost to dwell in. The Holy Ghost dwells with 
only those that have been cleansed by the blood. In the 
30th verse of the fourth chapter of Ephesians it says : " I 
was sealed by the Holy Ghost unto the day of redemption." 



286 GLAD TIDINGS. 

That is the work of the Holy Spirit. After we have been 
cleansed and purified, then the Holy Ghost can seal us for 
the day of redemption ; and who is going to break God's 
seal ? Can Satan do it ? Can all the infernal powers break 
that seal ? Can man do it ? Can all the world itself do it ? 
Can God break His own seal ? If we are sealed for the day 
of redemption, that seal will not be broken. And I want 
to call your attention to another very precious truth, and 
that is that the Holy Ghost dwells with every one that is 
sealed for the day of redemption. 

Now, I have got a great many letters against that hymn, 
"Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove," and I hear a great 
many people complain about our singing that hymn and 
praying for the Holy Ghost to come. They say He came 
on the day of Pentecost, and has been here ever since. But 
when we pray for Him to come, it is that He may anoint us 
afresh, that He may endow us with fresh power. There is 
such a thing as a man just having life but not having the 
power, and so when we pray that the Holy Ghost may come 
upon us with power that we may be anointed, that is a dif- 
ferent thing. Then in Corinthians, 3d chapter, 16th verse, 
it says : " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, 
and the spirit of God dwelleth in you." The Holy Ghost 
dwells in you. He dwells in us. He doesn't just come to 
visit us and then leave us. I don't believe there is a Chris- 
tian here but what would fall into some previous sin inside 
of forty-eight hours if it was not for the Holy Ghost dwell- 
ing in us. It is He that gives us power over the world and 
over Satan. Now I want this thing clearly understood. We 
believe firmly that any man that has been cleansed by the 
blood, redeemed by the blood, and been sealed by the Holy 
Ghost, the Holy Ghost dwells in him. And a thought I want 
to call your attention to is this, that God has got a good many 
children who have just barely got life, but no powers for ser- 
vice. You might say safely, I think, without exaggeration 



THE HOLY GHOST. II 287 

that nineteen out of every twenty of professed Christians are 
of no earthly account so far as building up Christ's kingdom ; 
but on the contrary they are standing right in the way, and 
the reason is because they have just got life and have set- 
tled down, and have not sought for power. The Holy 
Ghost coming upon them with power is distinct and separ- 
ate from conversion. If the Scripture doesn't teach it I 
am ready to correct it. Let us look and see what God 
says, and if you will look in the third chapter of Luke you 
will see that all these thirty years that Christ had been in 
Nazareth He had been a son, but now. the Holy Ghost 
comes upon Him for service, and He goes back to Nazareth 
and finds a place where it is written : " The Spirit of the 
Lord God is upon me because He hath anointed me to 
preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the 
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive, to re- 
cover sight to the blind, and set at liberty them that are 
bruised." And for three years we find Him preaching the 
kingdom of God, casting out devils, and raising the dead, 
while for thirty years that He was at Nazareth, we hear 
nothing of Him. He was a son all the while, but now He 
is anointed for service ; and if the Son of God has got to 
be anointed, do not His disciples need it, and shall we not 
seek for it, and shall we barely rest with conversion ? 

In the 7th chapter of John, 38th and 39th verses, Jesus 
says : " He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath 
said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But 
this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on 
Him should receive ; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given 
because that Jesus was not yet glorified." Now, do you 
tell me that Peter and John and James and the rest of 
those men had not been converted at that time ? Had they 
been three years with the Son of God and had not been 
born of the Spirit? Hid not Nicodemus been born of 
'he Spirit, and had not men been converted before them ? 



2 88 GLAD TIDINGS. 

Yes, but they were saints without power, and must tarry in 
Jerusalem until imbued with power from on high. I be- 
lieve we should accomplish more in one week than we 
should in years if we had only this fresh baptism. Then 
turn to the 20th chapter of John, 2d verse : " And when 
He had said this He breathed on them and said unto them, 
Receive ye the Holy Hhost." Now, that is the second 
time. They must have received the Holy Ghost when 
they were converted. They must have been sealed by the 
Holy Ghost for the day of redemption, and now Christ 
breathes upon them and says, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost." 
Do you think they did not receive it ? Of course they did, 
and yet they were instructed to go to Jerusalem and tarry 
there until they got power. 

It seems to me we have got about three classes of 
Christians : the first class, in the 3rd chapter of John, 
were those who had got to Calvary and there got life. 
They believed on the Son and were saved, and there they 
rested satisfied. They did not seek anything higher. Then 
in the 4th chapter of John we come to a better class of 
Christians. There it was a well of living water bubbling 
up. There are a few of these, but they are not a hundreth 
part of the first class. But the best class is in the 7th chapter 
of John : " Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living 
water." That is the kind of Christian we ought to be. 

When I was a boy I used to have to pump water for the 
cattle. Ah, how many times I have pumped with that old 
right hand until it ached, and many times I used to pump 
when I could not get any water, and I was taught that when 
the pump was dry I must pour a pail of water down the 
pump and then I could get the water up. And that is what 
Christians w r ant — a well of living water. We will have 
plenty of grace to spare — all we need ourselves and plenty 
for others. We have got into the way now of digging 
artesian wells better. They don't pump now to get the 



THE HOLY GHOST. II. 289 

water, but when they dig the well they cut down through 
the gravel and through the clay perhaps one thousand or 
two thousand feet, not stopping when they can pump the 
water up, but they cut to lower strata and the water flows 
up abundantly of itself. And so we ought every one of us 
to be like artesian wells. God has got grace enough for 
every one of us, and if we were only full of the Holy 
Ghost what power we would have. The influence of these 
meetings would be felt not only through New York but 
through the whole country. A learned doctor said once, 
speaking of Christ's holiness, " You fill a tumbler of water 
to the brim and then just touch it and the water flows out ; 
and so Christ was so full of truth that when the woman 
touched Him virtue flowed out and healed her." Every 
one of us should be as full of the Holy Ghost as this, and 
then men will see that we have an unseen power. We 
must not be satisfied with just having life, but we want 
this power. How many times we have preached and taught, 
and it has been like the wind, and why? Because our 
hearts were not full and we did not have that anointing. 

Peter's heart was full, and he had the anointing of the 
Holy Spirit when he accused the Jews of having crucified 
the Lord. This same man Peter, who only a few days be- 
fore denied the Lord, stood up and preached with unction. 
It was not the same Peter. Suppose that little girl who 
had heard him deny his Master, and swear that he did not 
know Christ, had heard Him preaching His name after- 
ward ? I can imagine how she would wonder. She would 
look at bim and say, " Isn't that the man that said He did 
not know Him, and swore to me and said he did not know 
Christ ? " She might have said, " Well, he looks like the 
same man, but it cannot be." Instead of being afraid of 
one little crowd of people, he charged it home to the whole 
nation, saying, "You have crucified our Lord." When a 
man is full of the Holy Ghost, he has boldness. He is not 



290 



GLAD TIDINGS, 



afraid to declare the Gospel truth in all its simplicity and 
drive it right home, even if he drives a man out of doors. 
We need boldness. In the thirty-third verse of that same 
chapter, it says, "Therefore being by the right hand of 
God exalted, and having received of the Father the prom- 
ise of the Holy Ghost." Now I believe the gift of the 
Holy Ghost that is spoken of there is a gift for certain, but 
one that we have mislaid, overlooked, and forgotten to 
seek for. If a man is only converted, and we get him in- 
to the Church, we think the work is done, and we let him 
go right off to sleep. Instead of urging him to seek the 
gift of the Holy Ghost, that he may be anointed for work, 
let him sleep and slumber. This world would soon be con- 
verted, if all such were baptized with the Holy Ghost. We 
find Philip, a deacon, going down to Samaria to preach. 
We find that Stephen, the first martyr, was a layman. The 
Spirit of the Word of God came down upon him, and he 
could not help preaching. When a man is full of the Holy 
Ghost, he cannot help working for the Lord. We would 
indeed have a stir in the Church if we were baptized with 
the Holy Ghost. The cry would be, " Here am I, Lord ; 
use me, send me ! " We would all be anxious to be used 
in God's service. Some people say if you are once sealed 
by the Holy Ghost you need never to seek for it again, that 
it is with you from that time, and if you are once full of 
the Holy Ghost you remain so. I heard of a man in the 
last half-hour who said that it is the teaching of Scripture 
and of our experience. Do you not all know of some men 
who were full of the Holy Ghost a year ago, and were 
anointed, and there was a mighty power upon them, and 
that have already lost their strength, as Sampson lost his ? 
But Sampson regained his strength, and those who have so 
lost it may regain theirs a second time, and many times. 
Let us not be trying to live on the old story. We cannot 
work now on grace that we had years ago. What we want 



THE HOLY GHOST. II. 



-291 



is further baptism. The 4th chapter of Acts, 31st verse, 
says : " And when they had prayed, the place was shaken 
where they had assembled together ; and they were filled 
with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God 
with boldness. There were Peter and James and John and 
the rest of them there, those very men that were filled with 
the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. There the Holy Ghost came 
a second time to them. They must have been converted 
by the power of the Holy Ghost away back where it is 
said " the Holy Ghost breathed upon them." They must 
have been brought under its influence a second time then, 
and a third time in the 2d chapter of Acts, and in the 4th 
chapter of Acts a fourth time. 

Some one asked a minister if he had ever received a 
second blessing since he was converted. " What do you 
mean ? " was the reply. " I have received ten thousand 
since the first." A great many think because they have 
been filled once, they are going to be full for all time after ; 
but O, my friends, we are leaky vessels, and have to be 
kept right under the fountain all the time in order to keep 
full. If we are going to be used by God we have to be 
very humble. A man that lives close to God will be the 
humblest of men. I heard a man say that God always 
chooses the vessel that is close at hand. Let us keep near 
Him. But we will have to keep down in the dust ; God 
won't choose a man that is conceited. The moment we 
lift up our head and think that we are something and 
somebody He lays us aside. If we want this power we 
have to give God all the glory. I believe the reason we 
do not get this power more than we do is because we do 
not know how to use it. We would be taking all the 
credit to ourselves and saying, " Don't I do a great work!" 
and begin and boast about it. There are hundreds of thou- 
sands, I believe, that God would take up and use and give 
us a great baptism if we would only give Him the glory. 



292 GLAD TIDINGS. 

We have not learned the lesson of humility yet, that we are 
nothing and God is everything. 

The true idea of preaching is to cry down yourself and 
the devil and to preach up no one but God. That is the 
kind of preaching that He wants. If a man only wants to 
preach Christ and keep himself behind the Cross, the Holy 
Ghost will use him, and he will be anointed for service. In 
the 19th chapter of Acts, they went down there at Ephesus, 
and they found twelve men, and said to them, " Have you 
received the Holy Ghost since you believed ? " The early 
Christians looked for that ; but what would our converts do 
now if that question were put to them ? They would rub 
their eyes and say they never heard of such a thing, and, 
What do you mean by receiving the Holy Ghost for 
service ? That is the reason men dare not speak to their 
neighbors about Christ, and the reason why every night so 
many go away from here that are anxious about their souls, 
and yet the man, the Christian who sits next them has not 
the moral courage to speak to them about Christ and 
salvation. 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 



You will find my text this afternoon in the 53d chapter 
of Isaiah, 4th and 5th verses : "Surely He has borne our 
griefs and carried our sorrows ; yet we did esteem Him 
stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But He was wounded 
for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities ; 
the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His 
stripes we are healed." 

Five times that little word "our" is used — our sorrows, 
our griefs, our iniquities, our transgressions, and the chas- 
tisement of our peace — there is a substitute for you ! I 
would like, if I could, to make that 53d chapter of Isaiah 
real. I would like, if I could this afternoon, to bring be- 
fore this congregation, or to bring out this truth — what 
Christ has suffered for each one of us. We lake up the 
Bible, we read the account of His crucifixion and death, 
how He suffered in agony, and we go away, lay the Bible 
down and think nothing more about it. I remember when 
the war was going on I would read about a great battle 
having been fought, where probably ten thousand men had 
been killed and wounded, and after reading the article I 
would lay the paper aside and forget all about it. At last 
I went into the army myself ; I saw the dying men, I heard 
the groans of the wounded, I helped to comfort the dying 
and bury the dead, I saw the scene in all its terrible reali- 
ties. After i had been on the battlefield I could not read 



294 GLAD TIDINGS. 

an account of a battle without it making a profound 
impression upon me. I wish I could bring before you in 
living colors the sufferings and death of Christ. I do not 
believe there would be a dry eye here. I want to speak of 
His physical sufferings, for that I think we can get hold of. 
No man knows all that Christ suffered. Now, when a 
great man dies we are all anxious to get his last words, 
and if it is a friend, how we treasure up that last word, 
how we tell it to his friends, and we never tire talking to 
our loved ones of how he made his departure from the 
world. 

Now, let us visit Calvary ; let us bring the scene down 
to this present age ; let us bring it right down here into 
this world this afternoon ; or let us go back in our imagina- 
tion to the time of Christ's crucifixion ; let us imagine we 
are living in the City of Jerusalem instead of New York ; 
let us take just the last Thursday He was there before He 
was crucified. Let us just imagine we are walking up one 
of the streets of Jerusalem. You see a small body of men 
walking down the street ; every one is running to see what 
the excitement is. As we get nearer we find that it is 
Jesus with His Apostles. We just walk down the street 
with them and we see them stop and enter a very common 
looking house. They go in and we enter also, and there 
we find Jesus sitting with the Apostles. You can see 
sorrow depicted upon His brow. His disciples see it but 
do not know what has caused His grief. We are told 
that He was sorrowful unto death. As He was sitting 
there He said to the twelve, " One of you shall this night 
betray me." Then each of them wondered if he were the 
one of whom the Master spoke, and they said, "Is it I?" 
Then Judas the traitor, said, " Is it I ? " Jesus said it was. 
Christ said, "Judas, what thou doest do quickly." Then 
Judas got up and left the room. For three years he had 
been associated with the Son of God. For three years he 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 295 

had sat at the feet of Jesus. For three years he had heard 
those words of sympathy and love fall from His lips. For 
three years he had been one of the faithful twelve. He 
had seen Him perform His wonderful miracles. He had 
heard the parables as they fell from the lips of Jesus. For 
three years he had been a member of that little band. So 
he got up and went out into the night, the darkest night 
that this world ever saw. He goes out of that guest 
chamber. You can hear him as he goes down those steps, 
off into the darkness and the blackness of the night. Then 
he went to the Sanhedrim and he said, " I will make a 
bargain with you, I will sell Him cheap;" and there he 
betrayed his Master for thirty pieces of silver. That was 
a small amount. Men condemn him, but how many are 
selling Him for less than that ? How many will give Him 
up for less than that ? There are men who will sell Him for 
a little pleasure, and women who will sell Him for two or 
three hours in a ball-room. 

You can hear the money being counted. He puts it 
into his pocket. He says, " Give me a band of men and 
I will take you where He is." It was then that Christ said 
those beautiful words. It was on that night that he said, 
" Let not your hearts be troubled. I go to prepare a place 
for you ; and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, that where I am there may ye be also." Instead of 
the disciples trying to cheer Him, He is trying to cheer 
them. He takes Peter, James, and John off from the rest, 
and then He withdraws from them about a stone's throw. 
Then He prayed to the Father. He that knew no sin was 
to bear all our sins. He who was as spotless as the angels 
of heaven was to suffer for us. From this lone spot His 
earnest prayers ascended to heaven. And while He is 
praying the apostles fall asleep, for their eyes are heavy. 
Peter, James, and John were heavy with sleep. When He 
gets up from prayer He looks into the distance. He sees 



the men who are hunting for Him. They are looking 
around through the olive trees for some one. He well 
knows who they are looking for. He went up to this band 
of men and said, "Whom seek ye ? " And they said, " We 
seek Jesus of Nazareth." " Well," said Jesus, " I am 
He." There was something about that reply that terrified 
those men. They trembled and fell to the ground. Then 
at last Judas came up, and I don't know but he put his 
arms around His neck and kissed Him. When Judas had 
kissed Christ, the soldiers seized Him, for Judas had told 
the soldiers that when they saw him kiss a man that was 
He. Those hands that had wrought so many wonderful 
miracles, those hands that had often been raised to bless 
the disciples, were bound. Then Peter takes his sword 
and cuts off the high priest's servant's ear. But Jesus healed 
the wound at once. He would not let the soldier suffer. 

Then they take Him back to Jerusalem. He can see 
the soldiers and the populace mocking Him. When they 
take Him back they are summoned before the Sanhedrim. 
They lead Him before the Sanhedrim, and Annas is sent 
for. He is taken before Annas and Caiaphas ; Christ is 
taken before the rulers of the Jews. There were seventy 
that belonged to that Sanhedrim. The law required that 
two witnesses must appear against a person on trial before 
he could be convicted. They secure false witnesses, who 
come in and swear falsely. Then the high priest asked 
Jesus what it was that those men witnessed against Him, 
but He said nothing. Then the high priest asked Him a 
second time and said, " Art Thou the Christ, the Son of 
the Blessed ? " Jesus answered, " I am, and ye shall see the 
Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming 
in the clouds of heaven." Then the high priest said, 
"What need we any further witnesses ? Ye have heard the 
blasphemy from His own lips." And the verdict came 
forth, " He is guilty of death ! " What a sentence ! After 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST 297 

a moment He was pronounced guilty of death. You can see 
one of these soldiers strike Him with the palm of his hand. 
Another spits in His face. Why, if I should spit in any of 
your faces you would be disgusted and get up and leave 
the hall. They not only struck Him, but they spit upon 
Him. They keep Him until morning. While they are 
keeping Him Peter is out in the Judgment Hall swearing 
that he never knew Him. They had all forsaken Him. 
Judas had already come back and thrown down the money 
which had been paid him for betraying innocent blood. He 
was about going out to hang himself. 

About daylight they take Christ before Pilate. They are 
so eager for His blood that they cannot wait. By this time 
the city is filled with strangers from all parts of the country. 
They had heard that the Galilean prophet had been 
brought before the Sanhedrim, that they had condemned 
Him, and that He was to die the cruel death of the 
Cross, and all they had to do was to get Pilate's consent 
and they would then put Him out of the way. Pilate look- 
ed at Him and talked with Him, and then said, " I find no 
fault in this man." And they shouted, " Why, if you 
chastise this man and let Him go, you will do wrong ; He 
is a Galilean." " Why," said Pilate, " is He a Galilean ? " 
And they told Pilate that He was brought up at Nazareth. 
When he heard that, glad to get rid of the responsibility, 
Pilate says, " Then I will send Him to Herod." There 
are a great many Roman soldiers keeping back the crowds 
in the streets, the same as our police on some great day. 
You can see these soldiers going before the crowd 
that have Jesus, clearing the streets. Herod was glad when 
Jesus was brought into his presence, for he hoped that He 
would perform some miracles to gratify his curiosity. We 
are told that Herod's men of war set Him at naught. They 
dressed Him up, took some cast-off clothing of one of their 
kings, perhaps, and said, " Hail, King of the Jews ! " Then 



298 GLAD TIDINGS. 

they came up and struck Him on the face. Oh ! 
friends, let us make this scene real to-day ! He was bruised 
for our transgressions. He is your substitute and me- 
diator. 

After they had mocked Him they dressed Him up in 
His own garments and brought Him before Pilate. You 
can see the crowd around the judgment hall. They are 
ready to put Him to death. Pilate wanted to chastise 
Christ and release Him, and then deliver a prisoner to 
them. And they cried, " Away with this man and release 
unto us Barabbas." 

They opened the prison door and let the prisoner out. 
Then Pilate thought of a way to save Him. He remem- 
bered that it was a custom among the Jews that on a cer- 
tain day one prisoner was to be released to them, and go 
unpunished. So he said to the Jews, " Which of these two 
prisoners shall I release, Jesus or Barabbas ? " And when 
the Chief Priest found out what was going on he went 
through the croud and asked that Barabbas might be re- 
leased. The Governor was disappointed, and when he put 
the question to the crow r d, " Which shall I release unto you, 
Jesus or Barabbas ? " Jesus who raised the dead, or Barab- 
bas who took the lives of men, whose hands were dripping 
with the blood of his fellow men ? No sooner was it put to 
the crowd than they lifted up their voices shouting 
" Barabbas, Barabbas ! " Then he said, " What shall I do 
with Jesus ! " And the cry rang through the streets, " Let 
Him be crucified." But a few days before the crowd were 
crying, " Hosanna to the Son of David ! " Then when the 
Governor heard it he turned and wrung his hands, saying, 
■' I am innocent of the blood of this just man." 

Oh, until I came to read all about what Christ suffered, 
I never before realized what He had done for us. I never 
knew until I came to read all about the Roman custom of 
scourging what it meant by Christ being scourged for me. 



my 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST 299 

When I first read about that I threw myself on the floor 
and wept, and asked Him to forgive me for not having 
loved Him more. Let us imagine the scene where He is 
taken by the Roman soldiers to be scourged. The orders 
were to put forty stripes, one after another, upon his bared 
back. Sometimes it took fifteen minutes, and the man 
died in the process of being scourged. See Him stooping 
while the sins of the world are laid upon them, and the 
whips come down upon His bare back, cutting clear through 
the skin and flesh to the bone. And, after they had 
scourged Him, instead of bringing oil and pouring it into 
the wounds of Him who came to bind up the broken heart, 
and pour oil into its wounds — instead of doing this they 
dressed Him up again, and some cruel wretch reached out 
to Him a crown of thorns, which was placed upon His 
brow. The Queen of England wears a crown of gold, fill- 
ed with diamonds and precious stones, worth $20,000,000 ; 
but when they came to crown the Prince of Heaven, they 
gave Him a crown of thorns and placed it upon His 
brow, and in His hand they put a stick for a sceptre. 

Now you might have seen at one of the gates of the city 
a great crowd bursting through. What is coming ? There 
are two thieves being brought for execution. Between the 
two thieves is the Son of God, walking through the streets 
of Jerusalem. And He carried a cross. You ladies wear 
small crosses made of gold and wood and stone around 
your necks ; but the cross that the Son of God carried was 
a rude, heavy tree, made into a cross. I can imagine Him 
reeling and staggering under it. Undoubtedly He had 
lost so much blood that He was too faint to carry it, and 
before they got to the place it well nigh crushed Him to 
the earth. And then some stranger undertook to bear it 
along after Him. I can imagine the strong man carrying 
it along, and the crowd hooting, " Away with Him ; away 
with Him " — a pestilent fellow, as they called Him. This 



3°° 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



was only nine o'clock in the morning. They arrived at Cal- 
vary a little before nine. Then they took up the Son of 
God and they laid Him out upon that cross. I can ima- 
gine them binding His wrists to the arms of the cross. And 
after they had got Him bound, up came a soldier with 
hammer and nails and put one nail into the palm of His 
hand, and then came the hammer without mercy, driving 
it down through the bone and flesh and into the wood ; 
and then into the other hand. And then they brought a 
long nail for His feet ; and then the soldiers gathered round 
the cross and lifted it up, and the whole weight of the Son 
of God came upon those nails in His hands and feet. 0, 
you young ladies, who say you see no beauty in Christ that 
you should desire to be like Him, come with me and take 
a look at those wounds, and remember that that crown of 
thorns was laid upon His brow by a mocking world. Look 
at Him as He hangs there, and at the people who pass hv 
deriding Him. There are the two thieves that revil 
Him, and the one that said, " Save us and save Thyself . 
Thou beest the Son of God." But hark ! At last there 
comes a cry from the cross. What is it ? Is it a cry to 
the Lord to take Him down from the cross ? No ! It is 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
Was there ever such love as that? While they were cru- 
cifying Him He was lifting His heart to God in prayer. His 
heart seemed to be breaking for those sinners. How He 
wanted to take them in his arms ! How He wanted to for- 
give them ! At last He cried, " I thirst ; " and instead of 
giving Him a draught of water from the spring, they gave 
Him a draught of gall mixed with vinegar. There He 
hung ! You can see those soldiers casting lots for His gar- 
ments as they crowd around the foot of the cross. While 
they were casting lots the crowd would mock and deride Him 
and make all manner of sport of Him. He cried only, 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 



THE BE A TH OF CHRIST 



301 



Right in the midst of the darkness and gloom there 
came a voice from one of those thieves. It flashed into 
his soul as he hung there, " This must be more than man ; 
this must be the true Messiah ! " He cried out, " Lord, re- 
member me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom !" We 
are anxious to get the last word or act of our dying friends. 
Here was the last act of Jesus. He snatched the thief 
from the jaws of death, saying, "This day shalt Thou be 
with me in Paradise." And again He spoke. What was 
it ? "It is finished," was His cry. Salvation was wrought 
out, atonement was made. His blood had been shed ; 
His life had been given. Undoubtedly, if we had been 
there, we would have seen legions of devils hovering around 
the cross. And so the dark clouds of death and hell came 
surging up against the bosom of the Son of God, and He 
drove them back; as you have seen the waves come gather- 
ing up and surging against the rock, and then receding and 
then returning. The billows were over Him. He was 
conquering death and Satan and the world in those last 
moments. He was treading the wine-press alone. At last 
He shouted from the cross, " It is finished." Perhaps no 
one who heard it knew what it meant. But the angels in 
Heaven knew ; and I can imagine the bells of heaven (if 
they have bells there) ringing out and angels singing, 
" The God-man is dead, and full restitution has opened the 
way back into Paradise, and all man has to do is to look and 
live." After He cried, " It is finished," He bowed His 
head, commended His spirit to God, and gave up the ghost. 
Do you tell me you see no reason why you should love 
such a Saviour? Would you rather be His enemy than His 
friend ? Have you no desire to receive Him and become 
His ? May God soften all our hard hearts to-day. 



DISOBEDIENCE. 



I find in the 4th verse of the 8th chapter of 1st Samuel : 
"Nevertheless, the people 7-efused to obey the^ voice of 
Samuel" — or you might say the voice of God, for God is 
speaking through Samuel — " and they said, We will have 
a king over us" I want to call your attention to this 
disobedience and the consequence. For between four 
and five hundred years God had been their king, and when 
they obeyed His voice and did what He told them to do, 
none of the nations were able to stand before them. They 
had never been degraded while they were walking in God's 
sight and obeying His voice, but now they got tired of 
God. They wanted to cast oif His yoke. They wanted 
a king like the nations around them had, who might lead 
their armies and make them as imposing and splendid as 
the nations around them were. When God brought them 
into that land He told them they should not have chariots 
of iron, and should not be trusting in horsemen, and in 
great armies, but He would be their defence ; He would 
be their shield ■ He would protect them, if they would only 
look to Him and trust Him. But no. They have their 
eyes on the nations around them, and they come to the 
old prophet Samuel, who has grown very old and is about 
to retire from office, and they said, " We want a king." 
And Samuel was very much displeased, heart-broken, and 
he took his trouble to the Lord, as we all of us ought 



DISOBEDIENCE. 303 

always to do, and the Lord says : " Well, now, Samuel, it 
is not you that they.have rejected, but Me. Don't take it 
so to heart, but protest solemnly against it. Tell them 
the consequences, and then, if they insist upon it, I will 
give them a king." He said this very often, as mothers 
deal with their children. They let them have something 
that they know will bring them into sorrow, just to show 
them how much better it would have been for them if they 
had obeyed without a murmur ; but then, there are very 
few of us that can learn by other men's experiences and 
we want to try our own way, and God permits us just to 
show how much better it is to take God's way than our 
own. 

Now, the Lord told Samuel He would send a man 
there whom he should anoint king ; and it seems that a 
man in the tribe of Benjamin, by the name of Kish, lost 
his asses, and he sent one of his sons to hunt them up. 
Little did he know as he left home where he was going 
to. He hunted for the asses two or three days, but was 
unsuccessful ; and as he came near Ramah his servant 
suggested that they should go up and see the seer or 
prophet, and he could tell them where to go. Now, the 
Lord had told Samuel the day before Saul came this was 
to be the man whom he should anoint to be Captain over 
Israel. What was Saul's surprise when the seer met him 
on the way, took him into his house, made him stay over 
night, and then took him up on the roof of his house and 
told him what the Lord was going to do Avith him. 
Saul seems to have been full of humility, for he told 
Samuel that he belonged to the smallest of the tribes of 
Israel, and did not think he was worthy ; but God chose 
him, and the next morning when he left the town the 
prophet went with him to the outskirts of the town, and 
said to him : " Let your servant go on before you," and 
after he had passed on and gone out of sight. Samuel 



3°4 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



anointed Saul king, and then told him what would take 
place on his way home, and where he would find his 
animals. And it all came to pass as he had prophesied. 
Saul went home and went about his work as usual, taking 
care of his father's sheep ; but one day a messenger came 
into the town in great haste bringing the startling tidings 
that the enemy had besieged the city, and the people had 
offered to surrender and become servants to the enemy if 
they would only just spare their lives ; and the commander 
of the besieging army said he would grant the request on 
condition that he might tear out their right eyes, and the 
elders of Jabesh said, " Give us seven days and we will 
decide." If the inhabitants of the city could not get help 
within seven days, they would have to have their right 
eyes dug out. And the people lifted up their voices and 
wept. And Saul came in from the field, and when they 
told him the tidings the Spirit of God came upon him and 
he was greatly angered. And he took a yoke of oxen and 
hewed them in pieces and sent them throughout all the 
coasts of Israel by the hands of messengers saying, "Who- 
soever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so 
shall it be done unto his oxen ;" and the fear of the Lord 
came upon the people, and inside of three days Saul had 
three hundred and thirty thousand people, and in the night, 
about daylight, he moved upon the enemy, and fought 
them until midday with such vigor that there were no two 
of them left together, and thus he routed the whole army 
and saved the city, and won his way to the hearts of the 
people. 

You know there is nothing like success. He had been 
successful, and had already been proclaimed at Mizpeh 
King, for Samuel had brought the people up to Mizpeh, 
and they had cast lots, and it had fallen upon the tribe of 
Benjamin and upon the house of Kish. And now he had 
had a successful battle and everything looked very bright 



DISOBEDIENCE. 



305 



and hopeful for him and his people. Why, when they 
raised the cry at Mizpeh, "God save the king ! " it looked 
as if everything was going to be in their favor. Saul 
was a head and shoulders above all men in Mizpeh, and 
they said : " We have got a fine looking king. No nation 
around us has got a man like him." He was a grand 
man to look at. Men like to walk by sight instead of by 
faith. They had got just the man, and they felt he was 
the one to meet the giants coming out against them, and 
they shouted for him, and the cry has been heard ever 
since in the earth, " God save the king." That was the 
first time that cry was ever heard, when they proclaimed 
Saul as king. 

But now the trial comes. The next thing we hear is 
that the enemies are gathering again. After the defeat at 
Jabesh-Gilead they called together their armies and nations. 
There were thirty thousand chariots of iron and six thousand 
horsemen, and the rank and file were like the sands of the 
sea shore — a " great multitude " — and the heart of Saul 
began to sink within him, and he waited at Gilgal for Sam- 
uel to come, and the army began to be discontented, and 
instead of looking to God and trusting Him — for He 
wanted them to put their trust in Him — Saul gets a little 
discouraged and breaks the law of God. The law of God 
was that no man should offer sacrifices but those that were 
appointed. Saul had no right to do it, but he took that 
position himself, and began to offer sacrifices, and his 
friend Samuel — than whom no man ever had a purer, truer 
friend — said to him : " You have done very foolishly. Now 
your kingdom is departed from you, and it shall not be 
maintained. You have disobeyed the voice of God." 
The old saying is, " Like priest, like people." The peo- 
ple would not obey the voice of God. Samuel deals faith- 
fully with him and tells him the consequences. Saul cries, 
" My army is leaving me and is becoming demoralized ; " 



, 6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

and Samuel says, " You ought to obey God, and let the 
consequences be what they will." 

And now it came to pass that Jonathan, Saul's son, 
said to his armor-bearer, " Come, and let us go over 
to the garrison of these uncircumcised ; it may be that 
the Lord will work for us, for He can save by many or by 
few." How the faith of Jonathan shines out here ! He 
feels that with the help of the Lord he can save the whole 
army. Would to God we had a few Jonathans right here 
in New York. Now says he, " We will just go up there, 
and if they ask us to come right into camp, we will take it 
as a sign that God is with us. And if they say, Stand 
where you are, we will know the Lord is not with us." 
And when they had climbed up the steep rocks the Philis- 
tines saw them, and shouted, " Behold, the Hebrews come 
out of their holes where they had hid themselves. And 
they said to Jonathan and his armor-bearer, " Come over 
to us;" and Jonathan said, "God is with us; He has 
given us the land." And he and his armor-bearer went 
up and slew the people, and in that first slaughter were 
about twenty men within a half an acre, and the people 
were frightened and trembled, and the watchmen of Saul 
beheld the multitude melting away like the snow upon a 
side hill, and Saul who was afar off began to inquire, " Who 
has gone out from us?" And they numbered the people 
and found out that Jonathan and his armor-bearer were 
gone. Saul had given a rash order that no one should eat 
until he had destroyed his enemies ; but Jonathan didn't 
know anything of this — after the slaughter when all the 
people had joined in the rout of the Philistines ; there are 
a great many men who are willing when the battle goes 
against our enemies to join in pursuit of them and then 
after the work is done say, '• Didn't we do a good work ?" 
but they hide themselves away in the caves and holes and 
dare not meet the enemy until some braver man has come 



DISOBEDIENCE. 



307 



to the front and done the work — after, I say, all the people 
had joined in the pursuit, they came to a wood, and there 
was honey upon the ground, but no one dared eat except 
Jonathan, who knew not of his father's order. It is de- 
creed that poor Jonathan must be slain. He has been 
disobedient and must die. Because Saul had disobeyed 
the Lord he did not die, but because Jonathan had dis- 
obeyed his father he must die. But the army said, "We 
will not let him be put to death." And they took the mat- 
ter out of the king's hands, and Jonathan was spared. 

But the Lord gives Saul another chance, and sends him 
to destroy the Amalekites, and tells him through Samuel not 
to spare a single man, woman, child, or beast. But Saul 
slew all the Amalekites except the king and the best of the 
sheep and the oxen. And Samuel comes out and Saul 
says, " I have obeyed the Lord." He had a guilty con- 
science, and was afraid Samuel would reprove him. " Ah," 
says the old Prophet, " What is the meaning of these cat- 
tle that I hear lowing ; these sheep that I hear bleating. 
Did not God tell you to destroy them ? " " Yes," says the 
guilty Saul," but I saved the best of the cattle to sacrifice 
to the Lord." Is it sacrifice that the Lord wants or obedi- 
ence ? That is the spirit of the present day. People say, 
" Oh, I know it is not just exactly right, still a man must 
be sharp to get along ; " and if they get money somewhat 
dishonestly and afterward endow colleges or build churches 
with it, they think it is good enough. They think the Lord 
will accept it if made dishonestly ; that He will overlook 
it. Will He ? See if He will. If we had not been dis- 
obedient there would be no need of sacrifices. 

Now, Samuel says to Saul, " To obey is better than to 
sacrifice. What God wants is obedience, and you have 
disobeyed him again. Now just listen, and I will tell you 
what God told me this night. God told me He has taken 
the kingdom from you, and will give it to your neighbor, 



308 GLAD TIDINGS. 

who is better than you are." And as Samuel turned to go 
away, Saul seized the mantle of Samuel, and it rent, and 
Samuel said to him, " Your kingdom has been rent from 
you as you have rent my mantle." And they separated, 
and never met after that. A sad parting, for a truer friend 
than Samuel no man ever had. Samuel wept over him as 
a father over his son, for he loved Saul. But Saul tried 
to have Samuel stay and honor him before the people, like 
many of the present day who care for the applause of the 
world rather than the approval of God. But Samuel went 
back to Ramah and left him. 

But now the enemy comes back again stronger than 
ever, thousands upon thousands, a great multitude, aijpi 
the hour of battle comes on. There on that hill are the 
armies of the Philistines, and here on this are the thou- 
sands of Saul j and at last a giant warribr comes out from 
the camp of the Philistines and cries to Saul's army, 
" Just select one man to come out and fight me, and if he 
will overcome me we will all be your servants," and he 
defies them day after day, and there is not a man in all 
that camp that dare meet the giant of Gath. They were 
all frightened, and the King trembled from head to foot. 
As he came out in the morning I think I can see them 
looking so startled, and saying " Look ! There he comes 
again." So he defies them again and again — "Show me a 
man that will dare to meet me." And so every morning, 
day after day, day after day, for forty days, he came out 
two or three times a day, and each army was afraid of the 
other, not daring to open fire. Just then, up came a young 
stripling. (Some one has said he was the first delegate to 
the Christian Commission.) He had been sent up from the 
country by his mother, to see how his brothers were getting 
on in the King's encampment. I suppose the mother made 
up some nice things for them to eat ; some nice cakes, per- 
haps, and jelly. I can see him coming up ; perhaps there 






DISOBEDIENCE. 309 

was a servant along, and up they come on their asses. 
Just as they came into camp, out came the giant again, 
and defied them. The young man looks at him, and then 
asks : " What, what does that man say ? Hark ! " He hears 
the giant defy Israel, God's anointed, God's own people. 
His blood begins to tingle in his veins. He goes into 
camp and says to his brothers, " What does that mean ? 
Why do not some of you go out to meet him ? " " Why," 
they said, " you don't know much about fighting, or you 
would not talk of such a thing in that way." Said he, " I 
will go myself, then." "It's a nice thing for you to say 
you'll go. Why, one look at him will make you run faster 
than you ever ran in your life." They began to make 
sport of him, and mock him. He said, " If there is no one 
else to go, I will go." But they only mocked him. At 
last some one said to the King, " There is some one in 
camp who offers to go and meet the giant of Gath." And 
the King said, " Go bring him." And when the King saw 
David, his heart sunk within him at once. What could he 
do ? He had not been used to using a sword. He did 
not know anything about it. The King said to him, " You 
are not able." He looked at David. He saw that he 
knew nothing of the use of weapons in battle. Said Da- 
vid, " I think I would like to meet him. A lion and a 
bear got into my father's fold one night, and I killed them 
both ; and I believe that God will be able to deliver me 
from the giant as he did from the lion and the bear." 
Some one has said there were thousands of men in that 
camp who knew that God could use them, but David was 
the only one there who believed that God would use him. 
Said David, " Now I will go." So they took him and began 
to dress him for the fight. They began to put armor upon 
him, and a shield and a helmet. But in a few minutes it 
began to act upon him He began to feel uncomfortable 
in it, and to twist himself and make wry faces, and at last 



3 io 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



he said, " I cannot fight in this armor." He was like a 
little boy in his grandfather's overcoat. It did not fit him 
at all. He said, " I have not proved it. I have proved 
the God of Israel. I have not proved this armor." It 
was like the way of the world. A great many are anxious 
to work in Saul's armor. If he had gone out in this armor 
and conquered, they would have said it was Saul's armor 
that did it. Then he said, " Let me take my sling. I am 
used to that." " What ! " they exclaimed, " a sling to 
meet the giant of Gath ? Why, he has a helmet and a 
sword and a shield and an armor-bearer ! " But David 
said, "Well, I will only take my sling." I can imagine 
how they made all manner of sport of him. But they were 
driven to extremes and must have some one, and so they 
let him go. Even his brothers must have thought he would 
surely be brought back dead. 

So he went to the brook and he picked up five smooth 
stones out of the brook. O, my friends, God uses the weak 
thing, God uses the little thing ! You and I would have 
wanted some good big rocks to have slung at him; but David 
got a few little smooth stones, and went to meet his enemy. 
The giant came out full of indignation and wrath, saying, 
"Am I to take the consent of this man to meet me?" David 
said to him, " You come with a helmet and a shield and an 
armor bearer. I come in the name of the God of Israel." 
So if we come in the name of God all giants will fall. So 
he puts one hand behind him and raises the other right up 
and throws his sling, and the giant falls dead ; and then he 
rushed right up to him and took his sword from him, and cut 
off his head, and with the sword and the giant's head in 
his hand, went forward towards the King. Then Saul call- 
ed to his cheering army, " Make haste, rush upon them ! " 
And it was not long before the whole camp of the Philis- 
tines were falling before their enemy. 

So God used the man who was willing to be used. He 






DISOBEDIENCE, ^ i 

used the man that had faith to believe that God would use 
him. But soon Saul began to grow jealous of David. It 
might have been that the fires of envy were kindled in Saul's 
soul by David's success immediately ; but first Saul wanted 
to show him off, that he had a man among his subjects who 
could accomplish what David could. So immediately after 
their success, they began to be happy and to sing, and at 
first they never, thought about jealousy. But soon the fire 
began to burn in Saul's pulses. He began to plan how he 
could put David to death, and get him out of the way. O 
what a miserable enemy we all have in jealousy ! How it 
does mar the work of salvation ! It is one of the worst 
enemies of God and man. Well three times God put Saul 
into the hands of David, once when he was asleep in the 
cave and David was left there in the cave ; but he would 
not lift his hand against God's anointed. But at last 
he drove him off into the wilderness, and finally he drove 
him out of his kingdom, and he went off into a foreign 
land. Samuel also died, and they buried him at Ramah. 
We are not told that Saul was there at his funeral. 
The enemy at last came again, as soon as they got 
strength after their defeat. The news came to Saul that 
the Philistines were marching upon his country. He brought 
out his own army again, and we see them there at Gilboa. 
Saul's kingdom now is tottering. He is full of remorse and 
despair. God has left him ; Samuel has died ; David has 
gone. The noble Jonathan alone stands by him. At that 
last battle he had three hundred thousand men at Gilboa. 
Only a few years before he had three hundred men, who 
were enough then. Now, notwithstanding his three 
hundred thousand men, he is full of fear, and so are they. 
What are even three hundred thousand, full of fear, and 
cowardice ? The Church has many who are full of fear 
and despondency, and they cannot work. God cannot use 
tliem. 



3 i2 GLAD TIDINGS. 

Saul cannot keep the fight off any longer. God has 
left him. So he says to the two men near him, " Go take 
me to some medium, some witch — the witch of Endor." 
And they took him off down to Endor. How are the 
mighty fallen ! One who had had Samuel and David for 
his counsellors went to consult an old witch — an old medium! 
In the day when he took the advice of Samuel, he once had 
all these witches burned ; but now he said, "Find me one." 
So he was led by some one away to Endor. He wanted 
Samuel brought before him. Yes, » the time is coming 
when you who make light of the counsel of a loved friend, 
of a loved mother or a loved father — the time will come 
when you will cry, " Bring me my mother ! O, that I 
could hear her counsel once more ! Would that I had taken 
her advice ! " That was the cry of Saul. " Would to God 
I had never left Samuel, would to God I had obeyed ! " So 
he said to that medium, " Bring me up Samuel." But Sam- 
uel was buried sixty miles away. Some persons think that 
at that time Samuel was brought before him ; but I do not 
believe that God would permit an old witch to bring a man 
like Samuel anywhere. A man came to me some time ago 
and said, " I want to know if you would not like to go to 
a place where I go, and see them materialize these 
spirits ? If you go there you can see your father and shake 
hands with him." I said, No ; that I would as soon put 
my hand in the fire. " In the last day shall come spirits, 
spirits from hell." I believe we are there to-day. I be- 
lieve they would deceive the very elect if they could. Thank 
God we have the Holy Spirit for our Guide and Comforter. 
I never saw a man yet who believed in these things who 
was not an infidel and who did not talk against the Bible. 
They come to see us and want to know if we want our de- 
parted ones brought up. Let our friends rest with Jesus. 
Let us not think they are sleeping in the grave. God per- 
mits them to see something that I do not see. They will 



DISOBEDIENCE. 3 r 3 

not be terrified and alarmed by being brought back here. 
God undoubtedly spoke to Saul there and told him of his 
doom — that he would not live 24 hours ; that the next night 
he too would be in the arms of death. Then they tried to 
git him to eat. He had not eaten anything for many hours. 
After they had coaxed him for some time, he sat down 
upon the witch's bed and ate. Think of Saul, a friend of 
Samuel, taking his last supper in such a miserable place ? 
At last the king arose and said, " We must go back." See 
him as he climbs the mountain side of Gilboa. His hour 
has almost come ; only a few more hours, and he will be in 
another world. O, that He had cried to God that night 
to save his soul. But he does not say one word. He can 
perhaps, as he goes on, see the enemy's fires burning on 
yon mountain side, while he steals back to his army. At 
last the battle commences, and the enemy prevail. It is 
not long before the whole Israelitish army is routed. They 
are beaten. When Saul saw there was no hope of saving 
his crown and he must perish, fearing that his enemies 
would take him alive, and perhaps put him into somejprison 
to die, he asked his armor-bearer to kill him : but the armor- 
bearer would not. He took his own sword and fell upon 
it and died. Let us learn a lesson from Saul. Let us obey 
God. " To obey God is better than sacrifice." It is obedi- 
ence that God wants. You may ask, " What may I do to 
obey God ? " You are just to believe on His Son and be 
saved. Will you obey Him to-day ? 



WALKING WITH GOD. 



My subject this afternoon is walking with God. For six 

thousand years God has been trying to win men back into 

His company, that they might walk with Him. We would be 

saved from many a dark hour, if we were only willing to 

walk with God, if we would only just let Him take us by 

the hand and lead us through this dark world. He would not 

lead us into darkness ; He would not lead us into trouble 

and sorrow ; He would lead us into the light. He sent 

His Son down here to tell us how to walk. In the ist 

epistle of Peter, 2d chapter, 21st verse, it says : " For even 

hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for 

us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow in His 

stead ; but did no sin, neither was guile found in His 

mouth, and when He was reviled, reviled not again. When 

He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to 

Him that judgeth righteously. 

What God wants is for us to follow in His footsteps. I 

have been told that there are some men out on the frontier, 

in the wilds of America, who in going through the Rocky 

Mountains will find an Indian trail where there is only one 

footprint,, as if only one man had gone over the mountains ; 

and I am told by those that know a good deal about those 

Indians that the chief goes before, and all the rest of the 

tribe follow him and put their foot into his footsteps. That 

is what our Chief wants us to do. He has passed through 
314 



WALKING WITH GOD. 



315 



the heavens and gone up on high, and wants us to follow. 
Whenever we are tempted, if we would just ask the ques- 
tion, " I wonder if Jesus would do it if He were here ? " and 
be willing to take Him as our guide, what a help it would 
be ! I am talking now to God's people — to Christians ; for 
no man would have any desire to walk with God until he is 
a Christian. You must be a subject of the Kingdom of 
God before you will have any desire to follow the King. 
Will you turn to the 26th chapter of Leviticus — " Ye shall 
keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary. I am the 
Lord ; if ye walk in My statutes and do them, then will I 
give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her 
increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit." 
And so He goes on and tells how He will bless them, and 
then again in the 12th verse : " And I will walk among you 
and will be your God, and ye shall be My people." If God 
is only walking with us what power we have got ! We have 
nothing to fear, literally nothing, because God with all 
His influence 'is walking with us. We can walk through 
into glory ; that is what He has promised us we may do. 
But He gives us a warning in the same chapter and the 27 th 
verse : " And if you will not for all this hearken unto Me, 
but walk contrary unto Me ; then I will walk contrary unto 
you also in fury ; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times 
for your sins." " I will walk contrary to you." What is it 
makes all the trouble in New York ? Because men are 
walking contrary to God. All the trouble in this world 
comes from that. He says, " If you will keep my statutes 
I will walk with you." As long as God was walking with 
Israel, they had power and success ; but they did not want 
Him ; they cast Him out ; they wanted a king like the 
nations round about. What is the result ? How quickly 
they got into trouble, and God had to bring a deliverer, and 
send David. That has been the experience of men for 
thousands of years. The moment a man goes away from 



316 GLAD TIDINGS. 

God and breaks away from His influence, he gets into 
trouble. I believe God has His hand upon this nation 
now, because they have walked contrary to Him. During 
the past few years how he has blessed this nation. (I am 
talking now of His own children.) How many of them 
have prospered abundantly ! But they have not made good 
use of their prosperity, and God has taken it away from 
them. I do not think He has got through yet. The hand 
of God seems to be upon the nation, and He is working 
contrary to us now. Most of us cannot stand prosperity. 
The moment God begins to prosper us, we forget all about 
Him, and are carried away by the temptations of the world. 
In the 6th chapter of Jeremiah, 16th verse, " Thus saith 
the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the 
old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye 
shall find rest for your souls." There is where you get rest, 
in the old path. Men want everything different from the 
old way ; they want some new Bible ; they want some new 
Tophet, some new church, something that will tickle their 
ears and tell them there is no God and no heaven and no 
hell. That is the trouble. They do not want the good old 
Gospel ; they do not want the God of the Hebrews ; they 
do not want the God of this Bible. Their cry is, " Give 
us some new Gospel ; give us some new way." 

Every generation for the last six thousand years has 
had its class of men that wanted some way besides God's 
way. He says, " Ask for the old paths, where is the good 
way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your 
souls." If you want to find people that have rest, you will 
see they have found it in the old way. No one ever found 
it in the " broad church," as some call it. But here they 
will not hearken. They say, " We will not hearken." 
What is the result ? The foreign nations came and con- 
quered them, and took their princes from them, and all 
their noblemen, and took them off to Babylon, and kept 



WALKING WITH GOD. 3^ 

them seventy years in slavery, and they hung their harps 
on the willows, for they could not play in a foreign land. If 
you say, " We will not walk in the old way," then God will 
walk contrary to you. It is one of the most astonishing 
things to me to see how people can go on, with their open 
Bible in their hands, and expect to gain anything by walk- 
ing contrary to God. We do not gain anything by turn- 
ing away from the God of our fathers. It is better to walk 
alone with God than to go with the whole world. The 
whole world has got to be punished if it goes contrary to 
God. Turning a moment into the New Testament, in 
Second Thessalonians, 3d chapter, 6th verse, I read, " Now 
we command you, brethren, in the name of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother 
that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which 
he received of us. For yourselves know how ye ought to 
follow us : for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among 
you." Then turn over to Second Corinthians, 6th chapter 
and 14th verse : " Be ye not unequally yoked together 
with unbelievers ; for what fellowship hath righteousness 
with unrighteousness ? And what communion hath light 
with darkness ? And what concord hath Christ with 
Belial ? or what part hath he that believeth in an infidel ? 
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols ? 
for ye are the temple of the living God ; as God hath said, 
I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their 
God and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out 
from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and 
touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you, and be 
a Father to you and ye shall be my sons and daughters, 
saith the Lord Almighty." 

Now if that is not clear, nothing is. We are then told 
what to do, and that if we are to keep company with God 
we have to be separate from the world. I do not know but 
it would be a good thing to stop preaching the Gospel and 



3 i8 GfAD TIDINGS. 

go right to work and preach separation to the Church, until 
the Church shall separate from the world. If we could 
only draw the line and say wherein they shall be separate. 
This idea that we have to be mingled with ungodly 
men, and be yoked with them, is contrary to the teachings 
of God. God says, If you will separate from the world, I 
will walk with you and bless you. If some prophet would 
arise and raise a cry of separation, and impress it upon the 
people until we could get the Church of God separate from 
the world, it would be a great day for Christian people. 
"Be not unequally yoked." What does that mean? Some 
say that means matrimony. If a Christian man has a 
Christian wife, he says it means matrimony. If he has an 
unchristian wife and wants to get away from her, he says it 
means matrimony. If a man who is a Christian wants to 
marry a woman who is not a Christian, he says it does not 
mean matrimony. A man came to me one day after I had 
been preaching on this subject in great trouble. He said, 
" I enjoyed that part of your lecture ever so much, and I 
don't believe it means secret societies, does it?" "Do 
you belong to one?" said I. "Yes," he saM. And so 
people think it means what it says, unless it goes right 
home to them. I think we do not need any particular 
light thrown upon that passage. It is very clear. If God 
will walk with us we have to be separate from unbelievers. 
If I am identified with ungodly persons, how is God going 
to walk with me ? How can two walk together un- 
less they be agreed ? Walking means communion, fellow- 
ship. If you see two men walking together every day, 
coming up from business at night, and going back down 
the avenue to business in the morning, we make up our 
minds that they agree with one another, and have fellow- 
ship together. If a man is walking all the time with unbe- 
lievers, it is pretty good proof that he is not walking with 
God. God says you must come out and be separate from 



WALKING WITH GOD. 3^ 

the world. I believe it means matrimony. I do not be- 
lieve that a Christian man has a right to marry any uncon- 
verted woman. I do not believe any woman has a right to 
marry any unconverted man. I imagine you will, many of 
you, go out of this building after you have heard this, and 
laugh about it, and ridicule the whole idea. Nevertheless, 
here is the Word of God for it. I never knew any one go 
against it that did not suffer for it. Let him that takes off 
the harness laugh, not him that puts it on. It is not for 
you, young people, that have not seen as much of life and 
the world as some others, to say that you can go right on 
and dispute this thing. You can see it is plain. There is 
not a mother here that would not feel badly to have a 
daughter marry a man that could not bear her, but would 
only make her wretched and abuse her. There is no father 
here who would not be made miserable by such a possi- 
bility. Do you suppose God does not feel it to have His 
sons and daughters marry an unregenerate and unconverted 
person that hates God, and would doubt Him, and misrep- 
resent Him and abuse Him ? That is what the world is 
doing. You say, " Yes, but I will have influence over this 
person if I marry him." Well, get influence over him be- 
fore you marry him. You may say some Christians are 
already married to unbelievers. Well, you have passages 
of Scripture about that, to tell you what to do. You are 
not then to be separated. If you are not already married, 
if you are not yoked, you had better take the advice given 
here in the Word of God, Do not be yoked up with unbe- 
lievers. Some of you say, perhaps, " If you take that 
ground, some people will leave the Church." Well, of 
course, but a great many more will come, who will be 
worth hundreds of such. Is it not a good deal better to 
have these false professors go back ? We say go back, but 
that they could not do, because they have never really 
gone forward. It is the Church shaking off these pretend- 



320 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ers that are hanging on to it. God says He will walk with 
us and adopt us as His children. I would rather have the 
smile of Heaven than the applause of the unconverted 
world. We have been trying too long to call upon the 
sons of Belial to help on the Church. We can get on 
without them. It will wake up the unconverted pretenders 
to feel that the Church can do without them. You say we 
need their money. We can get along well enough without 
it. God's people have money enough. God is rich. The 
cattle on a thousand hills are His. He can take care of 
us. He has money enough. 

A man came to me some time ago in some trouble, be- 
cause having formed a partnership some time before With 
two men in business he found his partners wanted him to 
do something that would compromise his Christian princi- 
ples. He was greatly excited. I asked, " When did you 
form this partnership?" " Three years ago." "When 
did you become a Christian ? " " Fifteen years ago." 
" Oh," said I, " there is the trouble. Why did you go and 
yoke yourself up with these unbelievers ? " He said, " I 
thought I could make more money, and could give it to the 
Lord." That is the way with a good many ; but the Lord 
can do without your money. Be right with God, and let 
the money take care of itself. I cannot, with an open 
Bible before me, see what right any child of God has to go 
and yoke himself up with unbelievers, in business, or in 
secret societies, or any other society. If you say it is to do 
good, you can do more good without them than you can 
possibly do by identifying yourself with them. Abraham 
had more influence over Sodom away up in heaven than 
Lot had there in Sodom. You say you must go into the 
world, and go to theatres and the opera, and be hand and 
glove with the world, in order to lift the world up, and get 
an influence over the world. I am sure that in the twenty- 
one years that I have been in the Church of God, it has 



WALKING WITH GOD. 321 

been my experience that these worldly Christians never 
lifted up the world yet. Some one said : " You might as 
well try to make the ocean fresh by throwing a piece of 
fresh meat into it, as expect to help up the world by be- 
coming a part of it. 

We have been redeemed out of this world and trans- 
planted into another world. We are children of the light : 
let us walk with children of the light, and not with chil- 
dren of darkness. I have noticed that when a Christian 
man goes into the world to get an influence over the world, 
and does as the world does, he suffers more than the world 
does. O, my friends, if you want power with God and man, 
be separate from the world ! You say if you take that 
stand you will have to go alone ? Well, you can go alone 
if you have God with you. Some one said, " If you take 
that course the whole world is against you." Well, then 
be against the whole world. Stand alone with God, and 
God will bless you. Joseph in Egypt walking with God 
had more power than all the men in Egypt apart from Him. 
When they locked him into prison they had to lock the 
Almighty in with him. You may suffer in the sight of the 
world for a while ; they may abuse you and say you are a 
pharisee. Never mind. Know that you are right, and be 
able to look up and see God smiling upon you. O, that 
God's dear people may learn the sweet lesson of separa- 
tion*! Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. Come 
out from among them. "I will be your. God, and I will 
walk with you," says Jehovah. I believe in my soul that 
the reason why so few of us have power with God and with 
man is because we are so near the world, and we are so 
much like it. Oh ! that the Spirit may show us what it is 
to be separate, to-day, that we may know what it is to have 
God walk with us ! 

In the 8th chapter of John it tells about a great many 
Christians that are groping in darkness, and I hear a great 



322 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



many persons say they feel just so. I will tell you the rea- 
son. You have got away from Christ. I contend that it 
is utterly impossible for any child of God to walk in the 
darkness who is following Him. Why ? Because He is 
the Light of the World. If you just get near Him, you will 
have the light all around you. It is because people have 
got away from the light that they are groping in darkness. 
It is the privilege of every child of God to walk in an un- 
clouded sun. If people would stop looking down at them- 
selves and would look up at Chii c t and keep looking at 
Him, they would have peace and light and joy all the while. 
That is where you get these things. There is no light in 
ourselves, or if there is, it is borrowed light that comes 
from God. Christ is the Light of the World. He says, 
" If any man follow Me, he shall not walk in darkness ; he 
shall have the light of life." 

When I was a little boy I used to try and catch my own 
shadow. I don't know whether any of you have ever been 
so foolish as that or not.- I could not see why the shadow 
always kept ahead of me. Once I happened to be racing 
with my face to the sun and I looked over my head and 
saw my shadow coming back of me, and it kept behind me 
all the way. It is the same with the Sun of Righteousness. 
Peace and joy will go with you while you go with your face 
toward Him. 

Once I was trying to walk across the field after a fresh 
fall of snow. I would try and see how straight a line I 
could make with my footprints in the snow. When I look- 
ed around to see how straight I was going I always walked 
crooked ; but if I kept my eye on the mark ahead of me, 
and did not take it off, I could walk straight enough. So 
if Christians only kept their eyes on the mark — on Christ 
Jesus, and followed in His footsteps, not turning around 
to see what kind of a path they have made — they would 
walk straighter. He is our model. If, instead of asking, 



WALKING WITH GOD. 323 

Why can't I do this and that ? Why can't I dance ? Why 
can't I go to the theatre ? Why can't I read The New 
York Ledger ? I don't see why I cannot do it ! Can you ? 
Then put it in this way, What is the use of it ? "Will it 
make me a better Christian ? " If it won't, then I won't 
do it. Instead of asking, What is the use ? and Why can't 
I ? ask if it will be for the honor and glory of Jesus, and if 
it won't, say, I won't do it. 

I do not see that we can have any better example than 
Christ Himself. Just consult the Word of God and see 
what Christ would do. You will find that God never 
makes a man do wrong. Who ever heard of a man back- 
sliding who walked with God ? God never backslides. 
If we are going to keep company with God we have got to 
walk. God does not stand still and does not run. You 
must grow in grace or else in worldliness. Enoch walked 
with God. He found the right way back there in that dim 
age. He was the most unpopular man in that time. If 
they had had him up for office, I don't think he would 
have got to be even so much as constable. God and he 
agreed very well, so that at last God said to him, " Come 
up here and walk with Me." Old Dr. Bonner said, 
" Enoch started on a very long walk one way — he has not 
got back yet." It is sweet to walk with God. We walk 
the wilderness to-day and the promised land to-morrow. 
Oh, that we all could say, " Father take my hand," and 
put our hand in His to-day. There is a difference between 
our having hold of God and His having hold of us. If 
God has hold of me I cannot fall, can I ? If the great 
God who created heaven and earth hold us by the hand 
what have we to fear ! When my little girl was about 
three or four years old her mother got her a new muff, and 
then she wanted to go right out and take a walk with that 
muff. She teased me to go out walking with her. I told 
her I was tired, but after a while I got up and went with her. 



324 GLAD TIDINGS. 

I said, " Emma you had better let me take hold of your 
hand." She said, " No, I wan't to put my hands in my 
mufl like mamma does." She was as proud as a peacock 
with the muff, and went strutting down the street. So a 
great many people start out with the idea that they are 
saved and can get along without the Word of God, but 
they find they need to have God hold them all the time.. 
My little girl went along alone for a minute, and by and 
by down she went. When she got up she said, " Papa, I 
wish you would let me take hold of your little finger ; " 
but, I said, " If you do, when your feet go from under you, 
you will let go and go down." She insisted on having my 
little finger, so I gave it to her. Pretty soon her little feet 
slipped from under her, and down she went again. Then 
w r hen she got up she said, " Papa, I wish you would take 
my hand." So I took her little hand, and held it by the 
wrist. Her feet went out from under her a number of 
times after that, but she did not fall because I held her. 
Oh, my friends, let us learn the lesson to-day of separation 
from the world. Enoch walked with God and God saved 
him. Abraham walked with God and God became his 
friend. Let us to-day put our hands in His as a friend, 
take hold and walk with Him. 



LOVE. 



It speaks in Galatians about love, the fruit of the 
Spirit being love, joy, peace, gentleness, long suffering, 
meekness and temperance. The way this writer has put 
it — and I think it is very beautiful — is that joy is love 
exultant, peace is love in repose, and long suffering is 
love enduring. It is all love, you see, a gentleness is. love 
in society, and goodness is love in action, and faith is love 
on the battle field, and meekness is love at school, and 
temperance is love in training. Now there are a great 
many that have got love and they hold the truth. I should 
have said they have got truth but they don't hold it in 
love, and they are very unsuccessful in working for God. 
They are very harsh and God cannot use them. Now let 
us hold the truth, but let us hold it in love. People will 
stand almost any kind of plain talk if you only do it in 
love. If you do it in harshness it bounds back and they 
won't receive it. So what we want is to have the truth 
and at the same time hold it in love. 

Then there is another class of people in the world that 
have got the truth, but they love so much that they give up 
the truth because they are afraid . it will hurt some one's 
feelings. That is wrong. We want the whole truth any- 
way. We don't want to give it up, but hold it in love, and 
I believe one reason why people think God don't love 

them is because they have not this love. I met a lady in 
325 



326 GLAD TIDINGS. 

the inquiry room to-day, and I could not convince her that 
God loved her, for she said if He did love her He would 
not treat her as He had. And I believe people are all 
measuring God with their own rule, as I said the other 
day, and we are not sincere in our love, and we very often 
profess something we don't really possess. Very often we 
profess to have love for a person when we do not, and we 
think God is like us. Now God is just what He says He 
is, and He wants His children to be sincere in love ; not 
to love just merely in word and in tongue, but to love in 
earnest. That is what God does. You ask me why God 
loves. You might as well ask me why the sun shines. It 
can't help shining, and neither can He help loving, because 
He is love Himself, and any one that says He is not love 
does not know anything about love. If we have got the 
true love of God shed abroad in our hearts we will show it 
in our lives. We will not have to go up and down the earth 
proclaiming it. We will show it in everything we say 
or do. 

There is a good deal of what you might call sham love. 
People profess to love you very much, when you find it is 
all on the surface. It is not heart love. Very often you are 
in a person's house, and the servant comes in and says such 
a person is in the front room, and she says : " Oh, dear, I 
am so sorry he has come, I can't bear the sight of him ; " 
and she'll get right up and go into the other room, and say, 
" Why, how do you do ? I am very glad to see you ! " [Laugh- 
ter.] There is a good deal of that sort of thing in the world. 
I remember, too, I was talking with a man one day and an 
acquaintance of his came in, and he jumped up at once 
and shook him by the hand — why I thought he was going 
to shake his hand out of joint, he shook so hard — and he 
seemed to be so glad to see him and wanted him to stay, 
but the man was in a great hurry and could not stay, and 
he coaxed and urged him to stay, but the man said no, he 



LOVE. 327 

would come another time ; and after that man went out my 
companion turned to me and said, "Well, he is an awful 
bore, and I am glad he's gone." Well, I began to feel that 
I was a bore, too, and I got out as quick as I could. [Laugh- 
ter.] That is not real love. That is love with the tongue 
while the heart is not true. Now, let us not love in word 
and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. That is the kind 
of love God gives us, and He wants the same in return. 

Now, there is another side to this truth. A man was 
talking to me out here the other day that he didn't believe 
there was any love at all ; that Christians professed to have 
love, but he didn't believe men could have two coats, and I 
think he reflected on me, because I had on my overcoat at 
the time and he hadn't got any. I looked at him and said : 
" Suppose I should give you one of my coats, you would 
drink it up before sundown. I love you too much to give 
you my coat and have you drink it up." A good many 
people are complaining now that Christians don't have the 
love they ought to have, but I tell you it is no sign of want 
of love that we don't love the lazy man. I have no sympathy 
with those men that are just begging twelve months of the 
year. It would be a good thing, I believe, to have them die 
off. They are of no good. I admit there are some that 
are not real, and sincere, and true, but there are many that 
would give the last penny they had to help a man who real- 
ly needed help. But there are a good many sham cases — 
men that won't work, and the moment they get a penny 
they spend it for drink. To such men it is no charity to 
give. A man that won't work should be made to work. I 
believe there is a great deal more hope of a drunkard or a 
murderer or a gambler than there is of a lazy man. I never 
heard of a lazy man being converted yet, though I remem- 
der talking once with a minister in the backwoods of Iowa 
about lazy men. He was all discouraged in his efforts to 
convert lazy men, and I said to them, " Did you ever know 



328 GLAD TIDINGS. 

of a lazy man to be converted ?" " Yes," said he ; "I knew 
of one, but he was so lazy that he didn't stay converted 
but about six weeks." And that is as near as I ever heard 
of a lazy man being converted ; and if there are any here 
to-day saying they don't love us because we don't give them 
any money, I say we love them too well. We don't give to 
them because it is ruin. 

Some years ago I picked up several children in Chicago 
and thought I would clothe them and feed them, and I 
took special interest in those boys to see what I could 
make of them. I don't think it was thirty days before the 
clothes had all gone to whisky and the fathers had drank 
it all up. One day I met one of the little boys for whom 
I had bought a pair of boots only the day before. There 
was a snow-storm coming up and he was barefooted. 
" Mike," says I, " how's this ? Where are your boots ? " 
"Father and mother took them away," said he. There is 
a good deal that we think is charity that is really doing a 
great deal of mischief ; and the people must not think be- 
cause we don't give them money to aid them in their pov- 
erty that we don't love them, for the money would go into 
their pockets to get whisky with. It is no sign that we are 
all hypocrites and insincere in our love that we don't give 
money. I believe if the prodigal son could have got all 
the money he wanted in that foreign country he would 
never have come home, and it was a good thing for him 
that he did get hard up and had to live on the husks that 
the swine ate. And it is a good thing that people should 
suffer. If they get a good living without work, they will 
never work. We can never make anything of them. God 
has decreed that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of 
his brow, and not live on other people. 

But I am getting away from the subject.- I only wanted 
to touch upon this subject because a good many are com- 
plaining that Christian people don't help them. I have 



LOVE. 329 

sometimes fifteen or twenty letters a day, coming from 
-Kansas, and Europe even, asking us to take up a collec- 
tion. They say : " Here is a poor woman. Just get the 
people to give a penny apiece." Suppose we began doing 
that sort of thing. We should have to have somebody to 
look up this man or this woman and find if they are 
worthy. If we took up one collection, we would have 
to take up five hundred. I never found a person true to 
Christ but what the Lord would take care of them. I 
think it is a good thing for people to suffer a little until 
they come back to God. They will find that God will take 
care of them that love Him. A great many say, " Oh, I 
love God." It is easy enough to say this, but if you do 
love God He knows about it, be assured. He knows how 
much you love Him. You may deceive your neighbors, 
and think you love God, and assume a good deal of love, 
when there is really no love in your heart. Now it says in 
Corinthians viii. 3 : " But if any man love God, the same 
is known of Him." God is looking from heaven down 
into this world just to find that one man. God knows 
where he lives, the number of his house, and the name of the 
street he lives in. In fact, He has the very hairs of your 
head numbered, and He will take good care of you. He 
will not let any of His own children come to want, He will 
not let any of those that come to want suffer, He will provide 
for their wants if they are only sincere, but He don't want 
any sham work. When the Lord was here He was all the 
time stripping those Pharisees of their miserable self-right- 
eousness. They professed great love for Him while their 
hearts were far from God. Let us not profess to love God 
with our tongue and lips, while ourlives are far from it. 

Another class say, " I don't know whether I love God 
or not. I am really anxious to know whether or not I 
love God." Now, if you are really anxious it won't take 
you long to find out. You cannot love God and the world 



33° 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



at the same time, because they abhor each other. They 
are at enmity, always have been and always will be. It is 
the world that crucified God's Son • it was the world that 
put God's Son to death. Therefore, if we love the world 
it is a pretty good evidence that the love of the Father is 
not in us. We may say our prayers and go through some 
religious performances, but our hearts are not right with 
God because we cannot love God and the world at the 
same time. We have got to get the world under our feet 
and the love of God must be first in our hearts or else we 
have not got the love of God. The command we have is 
that he who loveth God loveth his brother also. Now, if 
we have got our heart full of enmity and jealousy and 
malice toward any of God's children it is a sure sign that 
the love of God is not in our hearts. To love a man that 
loves me — that don't require any goodness ; the greatest 
infidel can do that ; but to love a man that reviles me and 
lies about me and slanders me — that takes the grace of 
God. I may not associate with him, but I may love him. 
I may hate the sin, but love the sinner. And that is one 
of the tests by which to find out whether you have love in 
your heart. The first impulse of the young convert is to 
love every one, and to do all the good he can, and that is 
the sign that a man has been born from above, born of 
God, and that he has got real love in his heart ; and these 
tests God gives us that we may know. The question is, do 
you love the world ? Had you rather go to theatre than 
to prayer-meeting ? Had you rather go to a dance than 
to commune with the godly ? If so it is, then it is a good 
sign that you have not been converted and not born of 
God. That is a good test. People want to know whether 
they love God or not ; let them turn to that test and they 
will find out. If your heart is set on the world and you 
had rather not be with God's people, it is a sure sign that 
you have not been born of God. 



LOVE. 33 ! 

Well, there is another class of people who say, " I don't 
see if God really loves me and I love Him, why I am called 
upon to have so many afflictions and troubles." Just turn 
a moment to the 8th chapter of Romans, the 28th verse : 
" And we know that all things work together for good to 
them that love God, to them that are called according to 
His promise." It is not a few things, not a part of them, 
but all work together for good. Give a man constant pros- 
perity and how quick he turns away from God, and so it is 
a little trouble here, and a little reverse here, and some 
prosperity there, and taken all together it is the very thing 
we need. 

If you just take your Bibles you will find that God loves 
you. There is no cme in this wide world, sinner, that loves 
you as God loves you. You may think your father loves 
you, or your mother loves you, or a brother or a sister, but 
let me tell you you can multiply it by ten thousand times 
ten thousand before it can equal God's love. " While we 
were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Can you have 
greater proof of God's love and Christ's love ? " Greater 
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life 
for his friends." Christ laid down His life for His enemies. 
Ah, my friends, it will take all eternity for us to find out 
the height and breadth and length and depth of God's 
love. I am told that when that Roman Catholic Arch- 
bishop in Paris was thrust into prison during the last war 
there was a window in the door of his cell in the shape of 
a cross. He took his pencil and at the top and bottom 
marked the height and length and depth, and at each end 
of the arm the length and breadth. Ah, that Catholic 
bishop had been to Calvary. He could realize the breadth 
and length and depth and height of God's love, and that 
Christ gave Himself up freely for us all. 

How men with an open Bible can say that God don't love 
them is more than I can understand. But the devil is 



332 GLAD TIDINGS. 

deceitful and puts that into their heads. Let me beg you, 
beg you, go to Calvary and there you may just for a 
moment catch a glimpse of God's love. There was a man 
came from Europe to this country a year or two ago, and 
he became dissatisfied and went to Cuba in 1867 when 
they had that great civil war there. Finally he was arrested 
for a spy, court-martialed, and condemned to be shot. He 
sent for the American Consul and the English Consul, and 
went on to prove to them that he was no spy. These two 
men were thoroughly convinced that the man was no spy, 
and they went to one of -the Spanish officers and said, 
" This man you have condemned to be shot is an innocent 
man." "Well," the Spanish officer says, " the man has 
been legally tried by our laws and condemned, and the law 
must take its course and the man must die." And the 
next morning the man was led out ; the grave was already 
dug for him, and the black cap was put on him, and the 
soldiers were there ready to receive the order, " Fire," and 
in a few moments the man would be shot and be put in 
that grave and covered up, when who should rise up but 
the American Consul, who took the American flag and 
wrapped it around him, and the English Consul took the 
English flag- and wrapped it around him, and they said to 
those soldiers, " Fire on those flags if you dare ! " Not a 
man dared ; there were two great governments behind 
those flags. And so God says, " Come under my banner, 
come under the banner of love, come under the banner of 
heaven." God will take good care of all that come under 
His banner. Oh, my friends, come under the banner of 
heaven to-day. This banner is a banner of love. May it 
float over every soul here, is the prayer of my heart. God 
don't will the death of any who will come under His ban- 
ner of love. It is pure love, and sinner, may the love of 
God bring you into the fold is the prayer of my heart. I 
read once of a young man who left his father, and at last 



LOVE. 



333 



that father died and the boy came to the funeral, and there 
was not a tear that flowed over his cheeks during all the 
funeral. He saw that father laid down into the grave, and 
he did not shed a tear. When they came to break the will, 
and the boy heard that the father had dealt kindly with 
him and had given him some property, he began to shed 
tears. When that boy heard his father's will read, his 
heart was broken, and he came to his father's God. O sin- 
ner, if you want to find out God's love, take this last will 
and testament of Jesus Christ. He showed his love by 
going to Calvary ; He showed his love by His death agony 
there. He loves you with an everlasting love ; He don't 
want you to perish. O, may you love Him in return. 



CHRIST AS A DELIVERER. 



I want to call your attention to a verse which you will 
find in the 49th chapter of the Prophecy of Isaiah, 24th and 
25th verses : " Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or 
the lawful captive delivered ? But thus saith the Lord, 
even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away and the 
prey of the terrible shall be delivered, for I will contend 
with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy 
children" I want to talk about Christ as a deliverer. 
Now this whole audience could be divided into two classes 
of people — those bound by Satan, and those that have had 
the fetters snapped and are free in the sight of Jesus. 
Only two classes. We are all under the power either of 
Satan or Christ. We are led on by an unseen power that 
we have not got strength to resist, or else we are led on 
by the loving Son of God. Now Satan rules all men that 
are in his kingdom. Some he rules through lust. Some 
he rules through covetousness. Some he rules through 
appetite. Some he rules by their temper, but he rules 
them. And no one will ever seek to be delivered until 
they get their eyes open and see that they have been taken 
captive. The trouble with the Jews was that they did not 
know they were captive. They said, " We are the seed of 
Abraham. We never have been bound to any one. We 
never have been slaves to any one. We are free." But 
Christ went on and told them it was only the truth that 



CHRIST AS A DELIVERER. 



335 



could make them free. There is no liberty in the service 
of Satan. Now, if you really don't believe it I will tell 
you how you can try it and test it yourself. Just see if 
you can break off from your sin and see if it has not got 
.the mastery over you. " You are a servant of sin." You 
have not the power to break away from sin and deliver 
yourself. How many have tried and tried and failed ? I 
never knew any one to come to Christ in my life until they 
had tried every other way to deliver themselves, and at 
last they woke up to the fact that it was utterly impossible 
for them to deliver themselves, and then they were willing 
to let Christ deliver them. 

Now, I just want to call your attention to slavery. I 
don't know as there is any better illustration than that 
which we had in our own country a few years ago. Not 
that I want to bring that up to disturb any one's feelings. 
I think if I know my own heart I love the South as well as 
I do the North, but then I am going all around the world 
for illustrations. I can very often make people see things 
by illustrating them when I cannot in any other way ; and 
it is no feeling that I have about the South that causes me 
to bring up these illustrations. We must all know some- 
thing about slavery. Perhaps our children won't know 
as much as we do about it, but if you have not been South 
or were not South during slavery, you have read about it, 
and you know that when a man was a slave all his children 
were born in slavery. They were born slaves, and so 
when Adam fell in sin, when he sold himself out he sold 
out all his posterity with him, and we were therefore all 
born slaves. We have all been taken captive ; not only 
that, we read we are lawful captives. That is what the 
Scripture calls it, and now the question is asked, Shall the 
lawful captive be delivered ? " I will contend with him 
that contendeth with thee, and the lawful captive shall be 
delivered." And that is just what Christ came into the 



336 GLAD TIDINGS. 

world to do — to deliver the captive. Now, that is one part 
Gospel — that Christ came to deliver the captive. In that 
beautiful verse I have quoted so often since I have been 
here, and I will never get tired of it — the 4th chapter of 
Luke, 1 8th verse — it says : " The spirit of the Lord is 
upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the 
Gospel to the poor ; he has sent me to heal the broken- 
hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive." 

It was my privilege to go into Richmond with Gen. 
Grant's army. Now just let us picture a scene. There 
are a thousand poor captives, and they are lawful captives, 
prisoners in Libby Prison. Talk to some of them that 
have been there for months and hear them tell their story. 
I have wept for hours to hear them tell how they suffered, 
how they could not hear from their homes and their loved 
ones for long intervals, and how sometimes they would 
get messages that their loved ones were dying and they 
could not get home to be with them in their dying hours. 
Let us, for illustration, picture a scene. One beautiful 
day in the Spring they are there in the prison. All news 
has been kept from them. They have not heard what has 
been going on around Richmond, and I can imagine one 
says one day, " Ah, boys, listen ! I hear a band of music, 
and it sounds as if they were playing the old battle cry of 
the Republic. It sounds as if they were playing " The star 
spangled banner ! long may it wave o'er the land of the 
free and the home of the brave ! " And the hearts of the 
poor fellows begin to leap for joy. " I believe Richmond 
is taken. I believe they are coming to deliver us," and 
every man in that prison is full of joy, and by and by the 
sound comes nearer and they see it is so. It is the Union 
army ! Next the doors of the prison are unlocked ; they 
fly wide open, and those thousand men are set free. 
Wasn't that good news to them ? Could there have been 
any better news ? They are out of prison, out of bondage, 



CHRIST AS A DELIVERER. 



337 



delivered ! They can go to their wives, their children, and 
their homes now. Ah, my friends, you could not find 
happier men than those that were liberated at that time, 
and that is just the Gospel. Christ came to proclaim 
liberty to the captive. Every man has been taken captive 
by Satan, and Christ has come to snap his bonds. 

Another thing that occurred at Richmond. We had 
been there but a few hours before I heard that the colored 
people were going to have a jubilee-meeting down in the 
great African church that night, and I thought to myself, 
although I am a white man, I will get in there somehow. 
I had a hard fight to get in, but I did succeed at last. It 
was probably the largest church in the South. There were 
supposed to be three or four thousand black people there, 
and they had some chaplains of our Northern regiments 
for their orators on the occasion. Talk about eloquence. 
I never heard better. It seemed as if they were raised for 
the occasion. I remember one of them, as he stood there 
on the platform, pointed down to the mothers and said : 
" Mothers, you rejoice to-day that you are forever free, all 
your posterity is free, that little child has been taken from 
your bosom and sold off to some distant State for the last 
time." And some of those women shouted right out in 
meeting, "Glory to God! They could not keep the good 
news to themselves. They believed they were delivered. 
They believed the good news. Then this man turned to 
the young men and said : " Young men, rejoice to-day. It 
is a day of jubilee, a day of glad tidings. We come to 
proclaim to you that you are free. You have heard the 
crack of the slave-trader's whip for the last time." And 
they shouted and clapped their hands and said, " Glory 
to God ! " Then he turned to the young ladies and said : 
" Rejoice to-day ! you have been on the auction block and 
sold to captivity for the last time. And then the young 
maidens clapped their hands and shouted for joy. It was 



338 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



a jubilee. What made iliem so glad ? They believed they 
were liberated, and that is what made them so joyful. 
People want to know why Christians are so joyful. It is 
because they have been delivered from Satan. Some of 
those slaves had good masters, and slavery was not hard 
for them, but some of them had unkind and cruel masters ; 
but I will tell you no slave in all the Southern States ever 
had so mean a master as you have, and you have more 
reason to rejoice that Christ has come to set you free than 
any prisoner in our Southern States, and every one of you 
ought to rejoice here to-day that you hear the good news 
that Christ has come to proclaim liberty to the captive, 
to recover sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that 
are bound. Jesus has come to open the prison doors and 
let out the captive, and what you want is just to believe it. 
But there are some here that are still stumbling over 
that doctrine of election. Within the last twenty-four 
hours I have met two more. They don't know what liberty 
to them means. Well, there was a story told me while I 
was in Philadelphia by Capt. Trumbull. He said when he 
was in Libby Prison the news came that his wife was in 
Washington, and his little child was dying ; and the next 
news that came was that his child was dead, and the 
mother remained in Washington in hopes that her husband 
could come with her and take that child off to New Eng- 
land and bury it ; but that was the last he heard. One 
day the news came into the prison that there was a boat 
up from City Point, and there were over nine hundred 
men in the prison rejoicing at once. They expected to 
get good news. Then came the news that there was only 
one man in that whole number that was to be let go, and 
they all began to say, " Who is it ? " It was some one 
who had some influential friend at Washington that had 
persuaded the Government to take an interest in him and 
get him out. The whole prison was excited. At last an 



ii 



CHRIST AS A DELIVERER. 339 

officer came and shouted at the top of his voice, " Henry- 
Clay Trumble ! " The chaplain told me his name never 
sounded so sweet to him as it did that day. That was 
election, but you can't find any Henry Clay Trumbull in 
the Bible. There is no special case in the Bible. God's 
proclamations are to all sinners. Everybody can get out 
of prison that wants to. The trouble is they don't want 
to go. They had rather be captives to some darling sin 
like lust, appetite, coveteousness, than to be liberated. 
You need not be stumbling over election. The proclama- 
tion is, " Whosoever will, let him come and drink of the 
water of life freely." 

Miss Smiley said that after the war, when she went 
down South, she was in a hotel, and the room she was to 
occupy was so dirty that she said to the old colored wo- 
man that had charge of the room, " Auntie, you know I 
cannot live in such dirt as this, and you know, now, that we 
Northern people set you colored people free. I am from 
the North, and I want you to show your love for the North 
by cleaning up this room." She then went away for a short 
time, and when she came back in about half an hour the 
room looked as if a half day's work had been spent on it. 
And the old colored woman came up to her and said : 
" There ! now be's I free or beant I ? " " Why, what makes 
you ask that question ? " said the lady. " Oh," says she, 
" my old massa says I beant free at all, no one has a right 
to make me free at all, and he hasn't given me my free- 
dom ; and when I go out and see the colored people, they 
tell me I am free, and now bes I free or beant I ? " And 
there the poor colored woman had been free for months, 
and didn't know it. That is what the devil is doing with 
a great many. They are free, and don't know it. Now 
perhaps the colored woman could not read the proclama- 
tion, and find out. If you cannot read it, you can get some 
of your friends to read it. The truth shall make you free. 



34 o GLAD TIDINGS. 

The truth shall snap every fetter, set at liberty every cap- 
tive here to-day. 

You can be free this day and this hour if you will. The 
only way is to believe the proclamation, and then you may 
go free. He came to deliver you, and He will deliver ev- 
ery man and woman in this audience that wants to be de- 
livered. At the noon meeting to-day did you hear that 
man speak who had been a victim to opium for long years ? 
He had himself tried to conquer it ; he had also tried four 
or five physicians, and spent all his money and lost his 
character and his reputation and his friends. His own 
children turned against him at last. But the hour that he 
came to Christ and tried Him, Christ snapped his fetters, 
Christ delivered him, and to-day he is rejoicing in a Sa- 
viour's love. Every Friday, at the temperance meeting, 
you can hear them tell how the Lord has set them free. 
Perhaps a good many of you will say, " I am no opium 
eater ; I am a lady of refinement and culture." "I am a 
young man of moral standing ; I am not as bad as an opium 
eater." Don't you flatter yourselves ; you may be a good 
deal worse. Let us imagine how it may be. There is a 
boy six years old ; his mother died to-day. His father is 
a drunkard. Then the little fellow lives neglected. He 
hears around him nothing but cursing and blasphemy. He 
has no mother to watch over him, no mother to care for 
him and pray with him and govern and instruct him. He 
is neglected and never sent to school. His school is, as 
you might say, the devil's school of the streets of New 
York. There he learns everything bad. He grows up to 
know everything that is bad. I know when he becomes a 
young man he will swear, he will get drunk, he may eat 
opium. It may be that you have had a godly mother to 
pray for you and with you. She has guarded you and ed- 
ucated you. You have had, besides, a godly minister to 
instruct you, and you have heard sermon after sermon. 



CHRIST AS A DELIVERER. 



341 



All the years of your life you have heard of the Son of God, 
and you have rejected Him. I say, then, that you are 
worse. Do not let any one think you are not as bad as 
some who have lived as that poor boy did who grew up to 
be a drunkard. The drunkard is to be pitied rather than 
condemned. The man who ate opium — the doctor gave 
it to him when he was ill, and he became a slave to it be- 
fore he knew it. Some people inherit such things, even 
without knowing it. Well, when you have, you cannot find 
a better friend than Jesus Christ. Go to Him, and He will 
deliver you. He came to proclaim liberty to the captive. 
There is not a man or woman here to-day who is not a 
poor captive. All you have to do is to believe the proc- 
lamation which is in this Bible. 

Once the Emperor of Russia had a plan by which he 
was to liberate the serfs of that country. There were 
forty millions of them. Of some of them, their whole time 
was sold, of others, only a part. The Emperor called 
around him his council, and wanted to have them to de- 
vise some way to set the slaves at liberty. After they had 
conferred about it for six months, one night the council 
sent in their decision, sealed, that they thought it was not 
expedient. The Emperor went down to the Greek Church 
that night and partook of the Lord's Supper, and he set his 
house in order, and the next morning you could hear the 
tramp of soldiers in the streets of St. Petersburgh. The Em- 
peror summoned his guard, and before noon sixty-five thou- 
sand men were surrounding that palace. Just at midnight 
there came out a proclamation that every slave in Russia was 
forever set free. The proclamation had gone forth, and all 
the slaves of the realm believed it. They have been free ever 
since. Suppose they had not believed it ? They never then 
would have got the benefit of it. If one man can liberate 
forty millions, has not God got the power to liberate every 
captive in New York ? If there is a poor slave here, if 



342 GLAD TIDINGS. 

there is a child of earth here to-day who wants to be liberated, 
I have come to show He came to bring liberty to the captive. 
If you will come to Jesus Christ just as you are, black as 
hell as you may be with sin, He will cleanse you of sin ; 
He will free you, and make you heir to His salvation, if 
you will only accept it as a gift. 

When Wilberforce was trying to get a bill through Par- 
liament to liberate all the slaves under the British flag, 
away off in the islands subject to the British flag there was 
great excitement. They were anxious to get their liberty. 
When they were expecting the vessel which would bring 
the news that the bill had failed or succeeded, thousands 
of people went down to the shore to get the first news. 
The captain of the coming vessel knew how anxious they 
were to get it. As soon as the vessel was in sight, and he 
saw the multitude on the shore watching for him, he shout- 
ed the words, " Free ! free ! free ! " and they all took up 
the cry, and it spread through the island. 

Oh, my friends, we came here to-day to proclaim the 
Gospel Trumpet. " Free, free ! " You will never know 
what liberty is until you know Christ. This very hour you 
can be free if you want to be. We come to proclaim the 
Gospel of freedom here to-day. Once in a town in England, 
just before I went there they had a very dark Sabbath. The 
whole city seemed to be moved, and everybody talked about 
it. There was a man there in prison that had been con- 
demned to die. He was to be executed on Monday. They 
had tried to get the Governor to pardon him and had 
failed, so he was to be executed the next day. The black 
flag waved over that prison all day on that Sabbath. Min- 
isters preached about it, and held the man up as a warning. 
It seemed that a dark cloud hung over the city all day. 
Sunday night the poor condemned man could not sleep. 
He was greatly agitated and excited. The next day he was 
to be led out to execution. He was to be hung the next 



CHRIST AS A DELIVERER. 343 

morning. About midnight he heard the footsteps of a man 
coming to his cell. The poor man trembled, and at last 
there came the governor of the prison, bringing a dispatch 
from the Queen pardoning the man ! O, they said, what 
joy there was in that cell, what joy there was in that man's 
heart when deliverance came. I have come to bring you 
a proclamation of deliverance. You are slaves. Sentence 
is out against you. You are already condemned, and wait- 
ing for the execution. I have come to tell you of One 
who will set you free, if you will believe Him. 

If you will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ • now, you 
are free ; if not, you are condemned for all eternity. If 
you will accept salvation as a gift, it is yours. Here is a 
man who has a bad temper. Don't you want to gain the 
victory over that ? Christ will give it to you. Some men 
say they cannot help swearing. Well, let Jesus keep you 
from it. Here is a man with a strong appetite for liquor ; 
Christ will help you conquer it. He is a Deliverer as well 
as a Saviour. The trouble is, people do not know that 
Christ is a Deliverer. They forget that the Son of God 
came to keep you from sin as well as to forgive it. You 
say " I am afraid I cannot hold out." Well, Christ will 
hold out for you. There is no mountain that He will not 
climb with you if you will ; He will deliver you from your 
besetting sin. There is no sin in the whole catalogue of 
sins you can name but Christ will deliver you from it per- 
fectly. When Christ was on earth there was a woman in 
the temple who was bowed almost to the ground with sin. 
Satan had bound her for eighteen years ; but after all these 
years of bondage Christ delivered her. He spoke one 
word and she was free. She got up and walked home. 
How astonished those must have been at home to see her 
walking in. 

Look at the children of Israel going through the Red 
Sea. There was Pharaoh with his hosts pressing upon 



344 GLAD TIDINGS. 

them • the Red Sea was before them. What was going to 
become of them ? They had heard of God as a Saviour, 
but now they were to know him as a Deliverer. Moun- 
tains were on the right side and on the left. If they went 
forward it was death. Just at this critical time there came 
a voice from heaven, " Moses ! say to the children of Is- 
rael that they go forward." And the moment they started 
the Red Sea was separated, and God delivered them. He 
took them through the Red Sea. He will deliver you if 
you will let him. It is a glorious Gospel, and I like to 
preach it, of a Saviour that will deliver us from all sin. 
You may have a treacherous nature ; He can deliver you. 
You may have a mean and deceitful heart, as most of us 
have ; Christ can deliver you. We must look to Him and 
Him alone. Our cry must be but to Him, " O Lord Jesus 
deliver me and set me free to-day." There is a Deliverer 
here to-day who wants to set you free. 

When Pollock (that good man) was Governor of Penn- 
sylvania, a man in one of the counties was condemned to 
death for murder. His friends tried to get him pardoned. 
The Governor said the man must die. Before the man was 
executed the Governor asked the warden of the prison to 
let him see the man who was to be executed, so he went to 
see the man in his cell. He told the warden not to tell 
the man who he, the Governor, was, he went and talked to 
the man about his soul. He told the man that though he 
had been condemned to die God would save his soul ; and 
he prayed with the man and commended him to the God 
of salvation. After he had left him the warden of the jail 
told the man that his visitor was the Governor. He ex- 
claimed in sorrow " O, why, why, did you not tell me ? I 
would have prayed to him for pardon. I would have asked 
him for mercy." 

My friends, there is one greater than the Governor here 
to-day. He wants to deliver you. He will save you from 



CHRIST AS A DELIVERER. 345 

all your sins. Do you want to be delivered ? Do not say 
no one ever told you the way. He will bring you out of 
the prison. He will bring you out of bondage. He will 
put a new song in your mouth if you will let him. Let us 
pray that the captive may go free. 



NOAH AND THE DELUGE. 



You will find my text this afternoon in the first verse 
of the seventh chapter of Genesis : " And the Lord said 
unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark." I 
would like to have you ask yourselves the question now 
before I go any further — just ask yourselves this question, 
" Am I in the ark ? " and if you cannot answer the ques- 
tion, if you are not able to say you are in the ark, won't 
you just lift up your hearts in prayer if you never prayed 
before, and ask the Lord to give you light on the question 
to-day ? Now if these questions are true, and so far as I 
am concerned I have no doubt about it, it is an awful 
thing for a man or woman to die outside of the ark. 

One hundred and twenty years before, God had come to 

Noah and told him to build the ark that He now called 

him unto. It was a great building. It was no small thing 

for those days. If you should pat it into one story and 

one floor it would have been one thousand five hundred 

feet long and two hundred and forty feet wide. This room 

is about two hundred feet long, and the ark was seven 

times as long as this building and a good deal wider. 

The room would have been about sixteen feet high. Some 

infidels and skeptics have tried to make out that the ark 

was not large enough, but there is no trouble about that. 

Undoubtedly in those days they thought it was too large, 

and I can imagine that they complained of No.'ih for 
346 



NOAH AND THE DELUGE. 



347 



building such a large ark when there was nobody who 
agreed with him, and none to go into the ark but his own 
family. He certainly did not confer with flesh and blood 
or he never would have undertaken to build that ark. The 
people jeered and scoffed at him while he was building it. 
They made a great deal of sport of him. I can imagine 
how they ridiculed him, and if they had had insane asy- 
lums I have no doubt they would have had him in one of 
them. They laughed at him for spending all his time and 
money in preparing the ark. 

He lived in a darker day than we live in. He had no- 
body to sympathize with him outside of his own family. 
We are not told whether his father sympathized with him 
or not, or his grandfather, Methuselah. Almost everybody 
was against him, but yet the old man just obeys the voice of 
God ; he goes to work to build that ark. After he has 
toiled upon it for a good many years, I can imagine that a 
great many people came to see it ; people coming and 
making all sort of sport of him. You can see the oldest 
and the youngest. They are coming up to see that ark, 
and you can just see them pointing to the old man as he is 
at work on it. But, my friends, when God told him to 
build the ark, he went forward and built it, and I can im- 
agine as the years roll on he becomes more earnest in the 
work. He pleads for those countrymen of his. Then the 
work on the ark stops for a time, and the old man goes 
out on a preaching tour. He begs them to believe and be 
saved ; but they will not listen, and undoubtedly through 
those one hundred and twenty years that he preaches 
righteousness they mock on. They had full warning of the 
impending danger. Every time they saw the ark, every 
time they heard the sound of the hammer in that building, 
those antediluvians were warned, just the same as this 
building is a warning to the people of New York. Every 
time they passed it it has been a warning. It was a merci- 



348 GLAD TIDINGS, 

ful God that made this provision that the Gospel should be 
preached here without money or without price for the last 
two months, so that old or young, rich or poor, could come 
and hear it. All classes made sport of him. 

But Noah, in the face of all obstacles, still goes on 
with the work which has been assigned him. I can imagine 
that after one hundred years have rolled away the people 
become more skeptical. They will have nothing to do with 
it ; they laugh, and mock, and say, " We don't believe 
there is any danger," or " There is no sign of a flood. The 
light shines the same ; the sun is as bright as it has been 
the last thousand years. It is a very strange thing if this 
world is to be destroyed, for we are getting on so well and 
are so prosperous." And so they went on scoffing, drink- 
ing, marrying, and giving in marriage, as the Lord tells us. 
Some people say that their consciences were not touched 
and awakened. So it may be said that your consciences 
are asleep, and that you are dumb to everything pure and 
holy. That makes your fate worse. It is a good deal 
better for you to be wise and to hear the voice of God. 

Well, twenty years more have rolled away, and that is 
the time Noah has set. He told the people that after one 
hundred and twenty years the world would be destroyed. 
They had been looking into the heavens but could see no 
sign. The geologists could see no sign, and the astrono- 
mers predicted nothing. The geologists, and the astrono- 
mers, and the scientific men, and the wise men, and the 
great men in those days all united to testify that Noah was 
wrong — that God could not drown the world. Just as 
some men say now that God cannot burn up this world. 
The God that created this world out of nothing, called it 
into being from nothing, certainly can destroy it. Don't 
flatter yourselves, my friends, that God cannot destroy the 
world. Don't go on thinking that God is not going to call 
this world to judgment. He is a God of mercy, but there 



NOAH AND THE DELUGE. 



349 



is one thing we must keep in mind. He is a God of justice. 
We are taught that if a man won't have grace he shall 
have judgment. You can have grace, mercy, love, or you 
must take judgment, and the curse of God must rest upon 
you. 

Well, I can imagine that Noah's contract has run out 
and everything is ready. It is Spring, and all the people 
are busy planting their crops. But Noah plants nothing. 
" Look," they say, " he plants nothing. He will surely 
want." They were very much startled at his course. At 
length God told Noah to occupy the ark he had built. 
When he moves in "they all say, "Why don't he wait until 
a storm comes ? " The sun is shining brightly, without any 
sign of a coming storm. Noah and his family moved into 
the ark, the world is drinking, marrying, and giving in 
marriage ; there are the lambs and the stock grazing on 
the hillside, and everything moves on as it has for the last 
two thousand years. Yet right in the midst of it Noah 
went into that ark. God had told him that he was going 
to destroy the world, and he believed it. The people, who 
had formerly ridiculed the old man, were alarmed as they 
saw the beasts coming up from the fields and forests, the 
lion out of its den, and the bear out of its cave, and the 
lion and the lamb went in together. And down on the 
earth you can see the little insects which creep towards 
the ark. Then the little snail comes moving on toward a 
place of safety. After they had all gone in we are told 
that God shut the door, and in another place in the Scrip- 
tures we are told that when God shuts no man opens. 
After the door was shut the flood did not come. There 
were seven days' grace, as it were. If those people had 
cried for mercy then, I believe God would have saved them. 
They didn't believe that God would destroy the world, but 
did that change the decrees of High Heaven ? At last the 
storm began, and we are told that the foundations of the 



350 GLAD TIDINGS. 

deep were broken. Not only did the water come out of 
the heavens and pour upon them, but it seemed that it 
burst up from the earth, and the ocean broke from its 
banks. After the storm had raged for perhaps forty- 
eight hours, the scoffers began to change their tune. They 
cry to God for mercy. They go to the door of the 
ark and cry, " Noah, let us in ; Noah, let us in." But 
there comes a voice from within, " I cannot ; God has shut 
the door." So, my friends, the door that shuts in God's 
people in safety will shut you out. 

After the storm has been raging for a time, the news 
passes from one family to another that this or that loved 
one has been lost. Those that climbed into the highest 
tree-tops have been swept away. All are gone. Oh, my 
friends, picture the scene ! You may say that some men 
overdraw it. I don't believe any man could do that. No 
one was left to tell the story. Noah could not look out. 
The window was above him, and he could see nothing of 
the events that were transpiring. God didn't even permit 
him to see. I believe that no man can tell the agony and 
suffering. The day of judgment had come. 

One night I got a glimpse of what such a storm might 
have been when God arose and shook terribly this earth, 
and when the earth was visited by the Almighty. When it 
came how the earth reeled and staggered like a drunken 
man, to its very foundations ; and all the men who had been 
scoffing began to pray and to call upon God for mercy ! But 
it was too late. God had been calling upon them for years, 
and they had mocked and ridiculed and laughed until it was 
too late. 

So, to-day, God has provided an ark for every soul in 
this house. He says He does not want any of us to perish. 
He does not want any of us to die outside of the ark ; He 
wants us all to come inside the ark. 0, hear His loving- 
call to-day, " Come thou and all thy house into the ark." O, 






NOAH AND THE DELUGE. 35 z 

you who are mothers — I am speaking to a good many- 
mothers here to-day — mothers, come you in first. Noah 
went in first, and his children followed him. Noah had 
lived such a life as to give his children confidence in him. 
If you mothers do not go into the ark yourselves, how 
can you expect your children to go in. God calls you to- 
day. 

I have noticed all through scripture that this call of 
mercy comes first, and after that comes judgment. There 
were first one hundred and twenty years of grace, which 
were given by God to those antediluvians in which to re- 
pent, but they would not repent ; Christ called Jerusalem to 
repent, but it would not ; forty years afterward tidings came 
of the destruction of that city, wherein hundreds of thou- 
sands of people perished. In 1857 there was the great 
revival, in which there was a tide of salvation that swept 
over this land and brought many people into the Church 
of God. Right after that came our terrible war, and we 
were baptized in blood. Now we are again living in a 
glorious day. God is calling men to Himself all through- 
out the land. Is not to-day a day of mercy and grace, and 
does not God call upon you to come into the ark ? O, if 
you mothers would only step in and then plead and pray 
with your daughters and sons to come in, they will come. 
I never yet have seen a truly earnest father and mother 
whose hearts were set upon training their children to 
Christ, and who were living consistently as they ought 
to, and who really strove to have their children come, but 
that those children were saved either then or afterward. 
This impression has gone out, that it does not make any 
difference what religion the parents have, about their chil- 
dren going in the same paths ; that the children of good 
fathers and mothers are sometimes worse than those of 
other people, especially of ministers. A man who had 
heard this said, once took a certain district and canvassed 



35 2 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



it, arid got the names of every family in the district, and 
the stand that they had in respect to religion and conduct. 
Where he found the father and mother both Christians, he 
found that the proportion of two-thirds of the children over 
ten years of age were professed Christians, where he found 
only one of the two were Christians, one-third of the chil- 
dren over that age were members of Christ's Church ; and 
where neither father nor mother were Christians, there was 
only one-twelfth of the children Christians. I believe if 
we are only consistent in our life, we will have all our chil- 
dren with us in the ark at last. Every one of them will be 
brought into the ark, if we pray and work earnestly for 
it. 

What would have been Noah's feelings if one of his 
sons had refused to go into the ark with him ? Thank God, 
that in that dark time, Noah had lived so that his sons and 
daughters believed him and were willing to follow him. If 
he had not lived an earnest righteous life, they would not 
have been willing to go into that ark with him, and to have 
borne the scoffs and jeers of the mocking world. They 
might have said," Father, we cannot stand the ridicule that 
the world will heap upon us ; we will go over to the side 
of the world." But he had so walked as to give them per- 
fect confidence in him. Suppose, however, that he had 
not, and that as he rode away on the waves that night, he 
had thought on one boy left behind. He would have heard 
that storm and those billows dashing up against the ark ; 
perhaps he could even have heard the sound of the dead 
bodies as they dashed against the ark as the waves floated 
them up to the surface, while there he stood thinking of 
his loved boy. I can almost hear him exclaim, " O, that 
my son were here with me ! O, that my boy were in the 
ark ! " But he is left to perish in the storm. We can 
imagine that the poor boy stands off on a mountain top 
alone. He is the last one left of all his companions ; the 



NOAH AND THE DELUGE. 



353 



rest have been swept away. He can see the dead bodies 
floating round him, and the waves are rising higher. Be- 
yond there he sees the ark that safely holds his father and 
mother and family, and the same waters that are bearing 
him down to a watery grave are lifting up his family higher 
and higher, in perfect safety. I can see him as he is finally 
lost under the climbing billows. 

I am speaking to many mothers here to-day. 

O, mothers ! are your boys all in the ark ? Mothers are 
your daughters all in the ark ? If they are not, what are 
you living for ? What is your aim in life ? Is that the 
uppermost thought in your hearts at all hours — how you 
can get them into the ark ? Are you in the ark yourselves ? 
If you are not, why not come in to-day ? Why not come in 
and then try to bring them in ? It seems to me that parents 
are asleep, and while we are asleep our children are 
wandering on down to death. We hear of their dying 
every day ; we hear of their being suddenly taken away, 
snatched away unexpectedly, dying outside of the ark, 
while we as parents sleep on, with our children exposed to 
the wrath and the judgment. If there seems to be a dark 
mountain between you and the ark, press through the moun- 
tain. Though it is a mountain, it is at the same time but 
the devil's mountain, and the devil's mountains are all 
mountains of smoke and fog. Say to yourselves, " This 
day I must go into the ark, this day I will call my children 
in ; I will not stay out and let them perish." 

I read some time ago of a vessel that had been off on a 
whaling voyage and had been gone about three years. I 
saw the account in print somewhere lately, but it happen- 
ed a long time ago. The father of one of those sailors had 
charge of the light-house, and he was expecting his boy to 
come home. It was time for the whaling vessel to return. 
One night there came up a terrible gale, and this father 
fell asleep, and while he slept his lights went out. When 

23 



354 GLAD TIDINGS. 

morning came he woke up and realized what he had done, 
he was afraid that some vessel might have been wrecked, 
that lives might have been lost. He walked out on the 
shore and he saw there had been a wreck. He started out 
to see if he could not yet save some one who might be still 
alive. The first body that came floating toward the shore 
was to his great grief and surprise the body of his own boy ! 
He had been watching for that boy for many days, and he 
had been gone for three years. Now the boy had at last 
come in sight of home and had perished because his father 
had let his light go out ! I thought what an illustration of 
fathers and mothers to-day that have let their lights go out ! 
You are not training your children for God and eternity. 
You do not live as though there were anything beyond this 
life at all. You keep your affections set upon things on the 
earth instead of on things above, and the result is that the 
children do not believe there is anything in it. Perhaps the 
very next step they take may take them into eternity : the 
next day they may die without God and without hope. 

My friend, to-day I have come to invite you into the ark. 
" Come thou, and all thy house into the ark." Bear in mind 
that it is to come now, this very day and hour. I cannot 
say you can come to-morrow. I do not know what may 
happen to-morrow. I cannot say you may come next week. 
I do not know what may happen before then. I know I 
have only one more Sabbath to spend here, and if you are 
coming into the ark in the course of our ministry it will not 
be long before it is too late. I know you and I will then 
separate, and may not meet again until we meet in another 
world, until that great day when the heavens shall roll to- 
gether like a scroll. O, will you not be gathered into the 
ark of Christ to-day ? Let me plead with you to go in, to 
come unto the Fountain that is open for sin and unclean- 
ness. Will you not to-night go home and erect a family 
altar, and call your children around you, and call them to 



NOAH AND THE DEL UGE, 3 5 5 

come into the ark, and so you may gather them all in, and 
you will have them with you when the morning of the Resur- 
rection shall come, and when Christ shall come to make up 
his jewels ? 

The impression that a praying mother leaves upon her 
children is life-long. Perhaps when you are dead and gone 
your prayer will be answered. 

The other day I read of a mother who died, leaving her 
child alone and very poor. She used to pray earnestly for 
her boy, and left an impression upon his mind that she 
cared more for his soul than she cared for anything else 
in the world. He grew up to be a successful man in busi- 
ness, and became very well off. One day not long ago, 
after his mother had been dead for twenty years, he 
thought he would remove her remains and put her into 
his own lot in the cemetery, and put up a little monumeut 
to her memory. As he came to remove them and to lay 
her away the thought came to him, that while his mother 
was alive she had prayed for him, and he wondered why 
her prayers were not answered. That very night that man 
was saved. After his mother had been buried so long a 
time, the act of removing her body to another resting place, 
brought up all the recollections of his childhood, and he 
became a Christian. O, you mothers ! 

Many of you have children in heaven watching and 
waiting for you who are still outside of the ark, and you 
cannot meet your loved ones unless you turn and go in. 
Oh, for the sake of your own soul, for the sake of these 
children, for the sake of the Son of God, come into the ark 
this day. A friend told me of a Christian child who died, 
whose father and mother were not Christians. When the 
little thing was dying she called her father and mother to 
her and took their hands, and plead with them to come to 
Christ, and so meet her in heaven. She spent her dying 
moments and her dying strength to plead with her father 



356 GLAD TIDINGS. 

and mother to come into the ark. I would take the place 
of your departed ones if I could and speak for them to 
you to come to Christ. Everything that is pure and holy 
and lovely is beckoning us to come to that world of peace 
and joy. 



THE TWO ADAMS. 



I want to speak to-day upon the subject of the two 
Adams. Every person in this hall to-day is either in the 
first or second Adam, and I want for a little while just to 
draw the contrast between the two Adams. In the first 
chapter of Genesis, 26th verse, we will find the Lord made 
the first Adam lord over everything, over creation. They 
have now in the old country a great many titled men, and 
a good many whom they call lords. You might say that 
Adam was the first lord ; he was the first man that was 
lord over creation. God had made him lord, or you 
might say king, and the whole world was his kingdom. He 
was the father of all. The second Adam you will find if 
you turn to the first of Mark. You will see that when 
Christ commenced his ministry, after He had been bap- 
tized by John, He went off into the wilderness, and there 
He was among the wild beasts for forty days. He was not 
made lord over everything. He came not as the first Adam 
did, but He that was rich became poor for our sakes. 
Then in the second chapter of Genesis, the 17th verse, 
you will find the first Adam introduces sin into the world. 
I used to stumble over that verse more than any other 
verse in the whole Bible. I could not understand how 
God said Adam should die the day he ate that fruit, and 
yet he lived a thousand years. I didn't understand then, 
as I do now, that the life of the body is not anything in 



358 GLAD TIDINGS. 

comparison with the death of the soul. Adam died in his 
soul right there and then. Death is just being banished 
from God's sight ; for God is the author of life, and the 
moment the communication was cut off between Adam 
and God that was the end of life. It was then " Eat and 
die." Thank God ! It is now eat and live. If we eat of 
the bread of heaven we shall live forever. 

Then in the third chapter of the 6th verse God told 
him not to do it, and when the woman saw that the tree 
was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eye, and 
a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit 
thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with 
her, and he did eat. Now, there is the first sin that came 
into the world. The second Man, instead of yielding to 
sin — He that knew no sin — became sin for us. The first 
man brought sin upon u^s and brought sin into the world, 
but the second Man, who was without sin, became sin for 
us. A great many complain because Adam's sin comes 
down upon the human race all these six thousand years. 
They seem to think it is unjust in God that Adam's sin 
should be visited upon the whole human race, but they for- 
get that the very day Adam fell God gave us a Saviour and a 
way of escape, so that instead of complaining about God 
being unjust, it seems to me every one of us ought to 
look on the other side and see what a God of Grace and 
love we have. God was under no obligations to do that. 
If it had been any one of us, we would have come down 
and pulled the rebel from the face of the earth. We would 
have created another man, it might have been, but God 
made a way for Adam and all his posterity to be saved. 
He gave us another man from heaven, and through Him 
all of us could be saved just by accepting life. Through 
the disobedience of one many were made sinners, but 
thank God, through the obedience of another many are 
made heirs of eternal life. I want every one in this hall 






THE TWO ADAMS. 359 

to just turn away from this first Adam. He has brought 
all the misery into this world. It came by Adam's disobe- 
dience and transgression. He disobeyed, and sin came, 
and death came by sin. God's word must be kept, but you 
turn to the eleventh chapter of John, and you find Christ 
is the Resurrection and the Life. One brought death, and 
the other brought immortality to life. If it were not for 
Christ we could know nothing about resurrection. I pity 
the poor man who ignores Christ, who rejects the Son of 
God. What has he got to do at the resurrection ? In the 
third chapter of Genesis the first Adam lost life. In the 
first chapter of John the second Adam gives it back to us 
if we will only take it. The gift of God is eternal life and 
all we have to do is just to take it. All the pain and sick- 
ness in this world came by the first Adam, but thank God 
the second Adam came to bear away our griefs and sor- 
rows. " Surely, He hath borne our griefs and carried our 
sorrows." And you will find in the seventeenth chapter of 
Matthew that He cures our sicknesses. Now, when the 
first Adam had doue this, had sinned and brought death 
upon the world, had brought a curse upon it, he ran away 
and hid in the bushes ; but when the second Adam came 
to take his place and suffer his guilt, instead of hiding 
away in the bushes of Gethsemane, He came out and said 
to these men who were seeking for Him, " Whom seek 
ye ? " and they said, " Jesus of Nazareth ; " and He an- 
swered, " Here am I." He delivered himself up. The 
first man was disobedient unto death, but the second man 
was obedient unto death. Through the obedience of one, 
many shall be made alive, many shall live forever. Turn 
back to Corinthians, 15 th chapter, 45 th verse. That is the 
most wonderful chapter, almost, in the whole Word of God. 
You ought to be well acquainted with the fifteenth chapter. 
And so it is written, " The first man Adam was made a 
living soul, the last was made a quickening spirit." Now 



360 GLAD TIDINGS. 

there is a difference between a living soul and a quicken- 
ing spirit. The first was made a living soul, but he could 
not impart life to a dead body. He could hand life down 
through his own family and his own line. He was made a 
living soul, and he could have lived forever if he had not 
sinned ; but the second Adam was made a quickening 
spirit ; therefore He could raise others from the dead. All 
He had to do was to speak to a dead body and it would 
live. That is the difference between the first Adam and 
the second. The first was made a living soul and he lost 
life, and the second was made a quickening spirit, and all 
He had to do was to speak to dead bodies and they lived. 
He was the conqueror over death \ He bound death hand 
and foot and overcame it and was a quickening spirit. 

Now the first Adam was of earth, earthy. God prom- 
ised him the earth ; God gave him Eden, and he was all 
of this earth, earthy. The second man is the Lord from 
heaven. That is the difference between the two Adams. 
One is all of earth, earthy, and the other is from heaven. 
Now I don't see what people are going to do with these 
passages in the Bible where they try to ignore Christ's god- 
head, saying that He did not belong to the godhead — that 
he was not God-man. " The second man was from heaven," 
says Paul, "and therefore He spoke as a man from 
heaven." When the first Adam was tempted he yielded 
to the first temptation. When the second Adam was 
tempted He resisted. Satan gave Him a trial. God won't 
have a Son that He cannot try. He was tried ; He was 
tempted ; He took upon Him your nature and mine and 
withstood the temptation. The first Adam was tempted 
by his bride. The second was tempted for His bride. God 
says, " I will give you the church." He was tempted in 
this world just for His bride — the church. He came for 
His bride, and instead of the bride tempting Him, he over- 
came all that He might win the bride to Himself. And 



THE TWO ADAMS. 361 

you can always tell the difference between the two Adams. 
When the first Adam sins he begins to make an excuse. 
Man must have an excuse always ready for his sins. When 
God came down and said, " Adam, where art thou ? What 
have you been doing ? Have you been eating of that tree ? " 
he hung his head and had to own up that he had ; but he 
said, " Lord, it is the woman that tempted me." He had 
to charge it back upon God, you see. Instead of putting 
the blame where it belonged, on his own shoulders, he 
tried to blame God for his sins. That is what the first 
Adam was. We have it right here every day in our in- 
quiry-room — men trying to charge the sin back on God in- 
stead of getting up and confessing their sins. They say, 
"Why did God tempt me? Why did God do this and 
that ? " That was the spirit of the first Adam. But, thank 
God, the second Adam made no excuse. ' He took it upon 
Himself to bear our sins upon the tree. The first Adam 
looked upon the tree and plucked its fruit and fell. The 
second Adam was nailed to the tree. " Cursed is every 
one that is nailed to the tree." He became a curse for 
us. The two wonderful events that have take place in the 
world are these, that when the first Adam went up from 
Eden he left a curse upon the earth, but when the second 
Adam went up from the Mount of Olives He lifted the 
curse. The first brought the curse upon the earth, the sec- 
ond as He went up from the Mount of Olives lifted the 
curse, and so every man that is in Christ can shout Vic- 
tory ! and there is no victory until he is in Christ. 

When God turned Adam out of Eden, He put cheru- 
bim at the gate with a sword ; Adam could not go back to 
the tree of life. It would have been a terrible thing if 
they had gone back and eaten the fruit, and had never 
died. O, my friends, it is a good thing to be able to die, 
that in the evening of life we may shuffle off this old Adam 
coil, and be with the Son of God. There is nothing sad 



362 GLAD TIDINGS. 

about death to a man that is in Christ Jesus. God put a 
sword there to guard the tree of life. The Son of Man 
went into the garden and plucked up the tree, and trans- 
ferred it into Paradise. The gates are ajar (that is a poet- 
ical expression, but I use it for an illustration), and all we 
have to do is to walk right in and pluck the fruit and eat. 
Men complain because Adam was driven out of the Garden 
of Eden. I would rather be up there, where Satan cannot 
go, than to be in the old Eden. 

Thanks be to God, Satan cannot go up there ! The 
tree is planted by the throne of God, and there is the crys- 
tal stream by the river, and the tree is planted beside it. 
If God put Adam out of this earthly Eden on account • of 
one sin, do you think He will let us into the Paradise 
above with our tens of thousands of sins upon us ? If He 
punished one sin in that way, and would not allow him to 
live in the old garden for one sin, will He permit us to go 
to heaven, with all our many sins upon us ? There is no 
sense in the sacred history of the atonement unless our 
sins have been transferred to another and put away. There 
is no hope unless God's sword has been raised against sin, 
and if God finds sin on you and me we must die. All we 
have to do is to turn our sins over to Him who has borne 
our sins in His own body on the tree. Will you turn to 
the third chapter of Colossians, 3d verse : " For ye are 
dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." When 
Adam was driven out of Eden, all he lost was an earthly 
garden. God never promised him Heaven. He was not 
a fallen man ; he was an earthly man. God gave him 
Eden. What do we get if we are of the second Adam ? 
The moment that God pronounced His Creation good, 
then evil began to creep in. You could hear the footsteps 
of Satan coming. Satan said to himself, " Good, is it ? I 
will mar it then ; " and he went to work to destroy God's 
work. But no sooner had Satan left Eden than God came 



THE TWO ADAMS. 363 

right down and put man into a higher place than before. 
Thanks be to Him, we have our life hid with Christ in God ! 
You know Satan was once the Son of the Morning, but 
God afterward cast him out, and now God takes a man and 
puts him in Satan's former place beside Him on the throne. 
We have more in the second Adam than we lost in the 
first Adam. There is a poor sinner that takes and 
hides his life in Christ ; how will Satan get at him ? He 
is secure. Our life is where Satan cannot get at it. If he 
could he would get at it before we could have time to get 
our dinners to-day, and we could not have the power our- 
selves to keep him out ; but Christ keeps him out, and we 
are secure. When God said to old Adam, "Where art 
thou ? " Adam went and hid away. When He asked the 
second Adam, " Where art thou ? " He was at the right 
hand of God. When God asked the first Adam, " What 
hast thou done ? " he said he had sinned. The second 
Adam said, " I have glorified thee forever." He came for 
that purpose. That is all that He did when He was down 
here on earth. 

I want to call your attention to the natures of the two 
men. It is one of the most important truths that can be 
brought out. I was a Christian for twelve or fifteen years 
before I understood the two natures. I had a good deal 
of doubt and uncertainty because I did not understand 
one thing. I thought when a man was converted God 
changed his whole nature. We very often talk about a 
change of heart. I do not think that is a good way to 
put it. You cannot find those words in Scripture. All 
through Scripture it is a "new birth ; " it is a new crea- 
tion ; it is new life given ; " born from above of the 
Spirit ;" " born again." If it is a new birth it must be anew 
nature. I believe that every child of God has two natures. 
Some people say, "Why have you Christians so much 
conflict ? You are always struggling with yourselves, and 



364 GLAD TIDINGS. 

having conflict. We don't have it. Why is it ?" Because we 
have two natures ; and there is a battle always going on 
between the worlds of light and darkness. Once there 
wa§ a Judge who had a colored man. The colored man 
was very godly, and the Judge used to have him to drive 
him around in his circuit. The Judge used often to talk 
with him, and the colored man would tell the Judge about 
his religious experience and about his battles and conflicts. 
One day the Judge said to him, " Sambo, how is it that 
you Christians are always talking about the conflicts you 
have with Satan. I am better off than you are. I don't 
have any conflicts or trouble, and yet I am an infidel." 
That floored the colored man for a while. He didn't know 
how to meet the old infidel's argument. The Judge always 
carried a gun along with him for hunting. Pretty soon 
they came to a lot of ducks. The Judge took his gun and 
blazed away at them, and wounded one and killed another. 
The Judge said quickly, "You jump in and get the 
wounded duck," and did not pay any attention to the 
dead one until the wounded one was safely secured. The 
colored man then thought he had his illustration. He 
said to the Judge, " I think I can explain to you now how 
it is that Christians have more conflict than infidels. 
Don't you know that the moment you wounded that duck, 
how anxious you was to get him out, and that you didn't 
care anything about the dead duck until after you had 
saved the other one ? " " Yes," said the Judge. " Well, 
I am a wounded duck ; and I am all the time trying to get 
away from the devil ; but you are a dead duck, and he has 
you anyhow, and does not bother about you until he gets 
me for certain." So the devil has no conflict. He can 
devour the helpless and the widow, and it does not trouble 
him ; he can drive a sharp bargain, and get the advantage 
of a man and ruin him, and not be troubled about it ; and 
he can heap up such things all the time, and have no con- 



THE TWO ADAMS. 365 

flict within. Why ? Because the new nature in him is not 
begun. When a man is born of God he gets a new life. 
One is from heaven and comes from Christ, that heavenly 
manna that comes from the throne of God. The other is 
of the earth, and comes of the old Adam. When I was 
born of my father and mother I received their nature ; 
when they were born of their parents they received their 
nature ; and you can trace it back to Eden. We then 
received God's nature. 

There are two natures in man that are as distinct as day 
and night. With that old Adam in us, if we do not keep 
him down in the place of death, he brings us into capti- 
vity. I do not see how any one can explain the 6th, 7th, 
and 8th chapters of Romans in any other way. People 
sometimes tell me they have got out of the 7th chapter of 
Romans, but I notice they always get back there again. 
The fact is, we do not know ourselves. It takes us all our 
lives to find out who and what we are, and when we think 
we know something happens that makes us think we are 
not much further than we were when we started. The 
heart is deceitful above all things. In the 6th chapter of 
Romans it is written : " Knowing this, that an old man is 
crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed, 
that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is 
dead is freed from sin." And in the nth verse there are 
just three words to be specially considered : " Reckon your- 
selves dead." If we were really dead, we would not 
have to reckon ourselves dead ; but if we were dead, as it 
means there, we have to think of it and " reckon " about 
it. Judicially we are dead, but in reality we are down 
here fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil. Some 
people seem to think they have got away from the flesh, 
and that they are soaring away in a sort of seventh heaven, 
but they get back again sooner or later. We find them 
wandering off down here. You cannot make the flesh 



366 GLAD TIDINGS. 

anything but flesh. It will be flesh all the time ; it will 
bring us into captivity. If we do not put it off and crucify 
it, and keep it in the place of death, it will keep us there 
forever. What if a man does yield and says it is not he, 
but it is the sin in him ? It is but one man after all, not 
two men ; and one man is responsible. If I am led astray 
by Satan, I may protest against it as much as my "accuser 
does. I say I know I have been wrong • I was off guard ; 
I was not watching ; but I hate it as much as any one does. 
That is the reason why in the 17th chapter of Romans he 
calls it " I protest." But protestation does not excuse us. 
A man went into court, having been arrested for some- 
thing. He said he did not- do it, and when it was proved 
against him he said he did not do it — it was the old man in 
him. The judge said : " Well, I will send the old man to 
prison : the other may do what he can." If we yield and 
sin we have to suffer. 

And at the very time that we are doing good Satan 
comes along and says, "That is a good action," and goes 
on and gets us all puffed up. There are a good many that 
have been ruined by spiritual pride. At the very time we 
are trying to do good the devil is present trying to get us 
to do it with some impure motive. We are to put him off. 
He is no longer our master. We have been redeemed, and 
we belong to the new man. We must starve out the old 
man ; give him no food at all ; not let him speak. The 
more we put him down the weaker he gets, and the more 
the new man speaks through us, the more power he has and 
the stronger he gets. As the house of Saul grew weaker 
and weaker, the house of David grew stronger. If you 
feed the old Adam he will go right on growing. If you go 
on with the world, and go to the theaters and to dancing 
halls in preference to prayer meetings, the old man will get 
stronger and stronger. 

A friend of mine said that when he was converted and 



THE TWO ADAMS. 367 

began preaching he talked a good deal about himself. He 
said one day he saw in one of the hymn books left by a 
godly woman who had a seat in the church, a fly leaf on 
which was written these words : " Dear Harry, not I but 
Christ ; not flesh but spirit ; not sight but faith." These 
words my friend pasted in his Bible, and never preached or 
thought any more about himself. He kept himself out of 
the way. That is just what the old man does not do. 
With him it is self, self, self. If it is the new man it is not 
I, but Christ. If it is the new man, it is not flesh, but 
spirit. If it is the new man, it is not sight, but faith. In 
the old Adam it is death ; in the new Adam it is eternal 
life. We all come under the two heads. Which, my friend, 
do you belong to, the old creation or the new ? Let us 
pray that we may stand by the throne of God clothed in 
the righteousness of the Second Adam. 



THE SIX "ONE THINGS." 



I want to call your attention this afternoon to six " one 
things." The first, Mark x. 21 : " One thing thou lackest." 
We very often hear people say, " Oh, well, he is a very 
good man," or, " She is a very, very good person, but she 
lacks one thing," or, " He lacks one thing." But if that 
one thing is salvation, why he lacks everything. You might 
say all that a dead man lacks is life. That is all. All 
that a beggar lacks is money to make him rich. Only one 
thing ! A sick man that is lying right on the borders of the 
eternal world only lacks his health to make him all right. 
That is one thing, but it is everything to a man that is sick. 
Money is everything to a man in want — a beggar ; and if 
a man lacks salvation he lacks everything ; and it seems to 
me it would be well for us just to pause in life once in a 
while and ask ourselves the question, " Do we lack that one 
thing ? " Now, that young man spoken of here came to 
Christ, and Christ beholding him loved him. He was a 
noble young man. He tried to save himself by the law. 
He had the law and the prophets, but when Christ just 
touched his heart — for he had his heart set on his posses- 
sions — he found that he did not love God with all his heart ; 
he did not love his neighbor as himself. He thought he 
did, but he didn't know himself. He spoke very well of 
himself. He had a good opinion of himself. There area 
great many such people, and it is almost impossible to do 



368 






THE SIX " ONE THINGS:' 369 

them good. It is a good deal better for God to say, 
'• Well done ! " than for us. It is a good deal better for 
God to say we lack nothing than it is for us to say ourselves 
we are not lacking. I am told Whitfield once was a guest 
of a General high in position, and Whitfield's courage failed 
him. He wanted to speak to him about his soul, but he 
didn't have the courage. He was up late one evening and 
the next morning he was to go away early. The General 
was an old man, but he was one of those men that lacked 
that one thing. He lacked Christ and lacked salvation ; 
and Whitfield, when he went up stairs to retire, just took 
his diamond ring and wrote upon the pane of glass, " One 
thing thou lackest." And after Whitfield had gone some 
of the servants found that text of Scripture and spoke to 
the General about it, and God used that to bring the old 
soldier to his knees and into the kingdom. 

One thing thou lackest. My friends do you lack 
Christ ? I was speaking once in Manchester on a platform 
very much higher than this, and right below me, in a seat 
close up to the platform, sat a man who strained his neck 
looking up at me all the time, and I looked right down on 
him and said : " My friend, won't you take Christ ? " Said 
he, " I have got Him, thank God ! " He did not lack Him. 
He had got Him ; and it is the privilege of every one here 
to have salvation and to know you have got it. Now when 
I was out at sea some time ago we had been in a fog and 
storm and darkness for a day or two and didn't know just 
where we were ; but the moment the clouds broke away a 
little and we could get a glimpse of the sun, we took an 
observation to find out where we were, and I think it would 
be well for sinners to take an observation and find out. 
where they are. Have I a hope that will bear the light of 
eternity, or am I lacking that one thing that will be worth 
more than all the world when God calls me to stand for 
Him ? You know when a man comes to die, church order 

24 



370 GLAD TIDINGS. 

and government won't help him. It may be very well to 
ease a man's conscience, but when he comes to die, he 
wants a real, living, personal Christ. That is the one 
thing to do. My friends, have you got Him ? " Oh, yes, 
I go to church every Sunday." Well, that is not having 
Christ. You may go to church and lack Christ. " But I 
say my prayers." Yes, a man can say his prayers, too, and 
yet lack Christ. I suppose no one prayed more than Saul 
did in Jerusalem ; at least he thought he prayed. The 
time he really prayed was when he got near to God and 
cried out, " Lord, what will Thou have me to do ? " That 
prayer came right out of his heart and not out of the prayer- 
book. He cried right out what he felt. There are a good 
many that are just going through the forms. They have 
got the form but they have not got Christ. Now, my 
friends, let us be honest to-day, and let us see if we lack 
that one thing. If we do let us not rest until we have it. 
" One thing thou lackest ; and the young man turned away 
sorrowful." 

The next thing I want to call your attention to is in 
the 9th chapter of John. It is on assurance, because 
after we have got Christ the next thing is to know it. I 
have spoken sometimes about assurance, but I wish I could 
speak about it every day until I could get the Church of 
God to look into the subject. Suppose I should meet you 
when you go out of here, and should take you by the hand 
and should ask " Are you a Christian ? " You would say, 
" I hope so ; I trust I am." They don't dare to say right 
out, " Yes, I am on the Lord's side," but they say it in 
such a stammering way that they don't really believe it 
themselves. Night after night we have asked people to 
speak to those near them and they dare not do it. I 
have learned this, that you cannot get men to work until 
they know the Saviour themselves. Now, this man says 
here : " I know that whereas I was blind, I now see." If 



THE SIX " ONE THINGS.'' 371 

God does open our eyes we know it. They tried to make 
him believe Christ was nothing but a man, but, said he, 
"Haven't I been feeling my way through the world for twenty- 
five years, and don't I know I can see now ? " They could not 
beat that out of him. All the philosophy and science of 
the present day could not beat that out of him that where- 
as he was blind now he could see. All the Scribes and 
Pharisees could not beat it out of him. He said, " I know 
I see ; " and so, my friends, it is the privilege of every one 
of us to have Christ, and to know we have Him. This 
idea that we have got to go on through the world is a terri- 
ble uncertainty. We cannot tell whether we have got to 
spend eternity in heaven or hell. Some people say : " How 
are you going to be sure until you have got the judgment ? 
You have got to wait until you are brought before the 
Judge." Thank God, we are not ever going * >e brought 
into judgment. " Dont it say every one shau be brought 
into judgment ? " they ask. Yes ; but that is already pas- 
sed. I have been brought into judgment nearly one thousand 
eight hundred years ago at Calvary. If Christ was not Judge 
for me, who was He Judge for ? If He did'nt settle the claims 
of sin, what did He go into judgment for ? What does the 
Cross mean if it was not for judgment ? But they say : "Don't 
it say in Corinthians, every man must give an account of him- 
self for the deeds done in the body ? " Certainly, every one 
must give an account of his stewardship, but not for sin. 
That is already settled. Don't it say in the Scripture : 
" Know ye not that your sin shall not be mentioned against 
you ? " We are going to sit upon the throne at the 
right hand of God himself. We are not going into judg- 
ment. 

The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal 
life. If I didn't get eternal life twenty-one years ago, 
when I was converted, what did I get ? Then if we get it 
ought we not to know it? It is a terrible delusion of 



372 GLAD TIDINGS. 

Satan, and I believe hundreds of Christian people are 
being deceived by Satan now on this one point, that they 
have not got the assurance of salvation just because they 
are not willing to take God at His word. " But," a man 
said to me, " no one has come back, and we don't know 
what is in the future. It is all dark, and how can we be 
sure ? " Thank God ! Christ came down from heaven, and 
I would rather have Him, coming as He does right from 
the bosom of the Father, than anyone else. We can rely 
on what Christ says, and He says, " He that believeth on 
Me shall not perish, but have everlasting life." Not that 
we are going to have it when we die, but right here to-day. 
And another thing : I don't believe we will have any 
peace or comfort or joy until this question of assurance is 
settled. Some people say, " It is presumption for you to 
stand up there and say you know you are saved." I say 
it is presumption for me to stand up here and say I doubt 
it when God has said it. Shall I doubt God's own word ? 
But you say it is too good to be true. Then you must go 
and settle that thing with the Lord, not with me. I take it 
as I find it in the Word of God. Do you think He is 
going to leave His children down here in the dark world 
to go through life with terrible uncertainties, not knowing 
whether we are going to glory or perdition ? There is no 
knowledge like that of a man who knows he is saved, who 
can look up and see his " title clear to mansions in the 
skies." It is said of Napoleon that while he was review- 
ing his army one day, his horse became frightened at 
something, and the Emperor lost his rein, and the horse 
went away at full speed, and the Emperor's life was in 
danger. He could not get hold of the rein, and a private 
in the ranks saw it, and sprang out of the ranks towards 
the horse, and was successful in getting hold of the horse's 
head at the peril of his own life. The Emperor was very 
much pleased. Touching his hat, he said to him, " I make 



THE SIX " ONE THINGS." 373 

you Captain of my Guard." The soldier didn't take his 
gun and walk up there. He threw it away, stepped out of 
the ranks of the soldiers, and went up to where the body- 
guard stood. The captain of the body-guard ordered him 
back into the ranks, but he said " No ! I won't go ! " 
" Why not ? " " Because I am Captain of the Guard." 
" You Captain of the Guard ? " "Yes," replied the soldier. 
" Who said it ? " and the man, pointing to the Emperor, 
said, " He said it." That was enough. Nothing more 
could be said. He took the Emperor at his word. My 
friends, if God says anything let us take Him at His word. 
" He that believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ shall not 
perish, but have everlasting life." Don't you believe it ? 
Don't you believe you have got everlasting life ? It can be 
the privilege of every child of God here to-day to believe 
and then know that you have got it. 

How is a man going to do all this if he does not think 
he has got the foundation ready, if he does not know he 
has eternal life ? How is he going to add all these vir- 
tues and build up that monument if he has not that as- 
surance ? Do you not see that it is the privilege of every 
one of God's dear children here to-day to know that they 
have eternal life ? Christ is ours for time and eternity ; 
He will never leave us. It seems to me that we want 
this doctrine preached and taught now so that the Chris- 
tians of New York will be helped to go to work and to 
begin to talk to others. Make it personal. One thing I 
know — I cannot speak for others, but I can speak for my- 
self ; I cannot read other minds and other hearts ; I can- 
not read the Bible and lay hold for others ; but I can read 
for myself, and take God at His Word. The great trouble 
is that people take everything in general, and do not 
take it to themselves. Suppose a man should say to 
me, " Moody, there was a man in Europe who died last 
week, and left five million dollars to a certain individ- 



374 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ual." "Well," I say, "I don't doubt that: it's rather a 
common thing to happen," and I don't think anything 
more about it. But suppose he says, " But he left the 
money to you." Then I pay attention ; I say, "To me ?" 
" Yes, he left it to you." I become suddenly interested, 
and want to know all about it. So we are apt to think 
Christ died for sinners ; He died for everybody, and for 
nobody in particular. But when the truth comes to me 
that eternal life is mine, and all the glories of Heaven are 
mine, I begin to be interested. I say, " Where is the 
chapter and verse where it says I can be saved ? " If I put 
myself in among sinners, and take the place of a sinner, 
then it is that salvation is mine, and I am sure of it for 
time and eternity. 

In the first chapter of Luke, the 41st verse, we read of 
Mary's choice. After we have been saved, the next thing 
is to sit at the feet of Jesus, and learn of Him, as Mary 
did. That is God's college. You may go through And- 
over and Princeton and Yale and Harvard, or any and all 
of the colleges, but if you don't go to God's college God 
will not use you for His cause. He sends His teachers 
all out from there. We must learn at the feet of Jesus 
from His lips. A man who prayed at Jesus' feet did 
not have his prayers answered in the way he expected 
them to be. He wanted to stay there. He prayed 
to be allowed to sit at Jesus' feet forever. " No," said 
Christ, "go and tell what great things the Lord hath 
done for you." The first news that came to the dis- 
ciples that Christ had risen came from the two Marys. 
They came and fell at the feet of the Saviour, and He said 
to them, " Go, publish what thou hast seen ; go, tell the 
tidings." He said to Mary, " She hath the one thing 
needful," and that was to sit at the fountain and drink of 
the wisdom of the Saviour. The disciples were called 
disciples because they were to learn of Him. The young 



THE SIX " ONE THINGS: 



375 



converts who are not willing to study Christ and learn of 
Jesus, are not fit for His service. They must go to God's 
college and learn of Him. Martha was like many who are 
willing to work for God, to do something for Him, but are 
not willing to pause and hear the voice of Jesus. Hun- 
dreds of good people are willing to do all they can, but 
they are not willing to stop and hear the voice of the Lord 
and receive instruction from Him. He says, " It is more 
blessed to give than to receive." Mary took her place of 
receiving, and was content to put the Lord in His place of 
giving something. She chose the good part. I think if I 
had Christ in my house to-night, I would feel like not 
doing anything, like letting the supper go, and sitting at 
His feet to ask Him questions and listen to the answers. 
It is better if we are going to work for God to be alone 
with Him a great deal. 

There are two lives that Christians lead ; one before 
the world, wherein we manifest God ; and there is a life 
that we must live alone with God, and sitting at the feet of 
Jesus Christ. The longer I live and the older I grow, the 
more convinced I am that there are times when we must 
sit quietly at the feet of Jesus, and only let God speak to 
our souls. O, young friend, learn that lesson. It will 
save you many a painful hour. Just keep quietly alone, 
and learn of Jesus. You know it is when a man is alone 
with his wife that he tells her the precious secrets of his 
soul. It is not when the family are around, or when there 
is company there. So, when we want to get the secrets of 
heaven we want to be alone with Jesus, and listen that He 
may come and whisper to our souls. The richest hours I 
have ever had with God have not been in great assemblies 
like this, but sitting alone at the feet of Jesus. But, in 
these days of steam and telegraph, we cannot get time to lis- 
ten to Christ's whisper in our ears. We are so busy we do 
not choose that one thing needful. If we did, we would 



376 GLAD TIDINGS. 

not talk so much as we would listen, and when we did 
speak it would be only when we had something to say. 
We would hear words that came from the Master, and they 
would burn down deep into our souls and bring forth fruit- 
In the 20th- chapter of Matthew, 8th verse, you read 
the words, " One is your Master." Ah, to learn who is your 
Master and serve Him only ! We are willing to serve our 
friends, to serve the church, to serve the public, and please 
every one, and forget the Lord. But we should just have 
one master, and live to please him alone, and He should 
be the Lord of Glory. He is a good Master. I want to 
recommend Him to you here to-day. If He is not your 
Master, then the devil is. Every one has a master, and 
that master is either Satan or Christ. You may not ac- 
knowledge it, you may not know it, but either the Lord of 
Glory or else the Prince of the Powers of Darkness is the 
one you serve. Satan is a hard and cruel master. If you 
make mistakes under him, he will have no mercy for you. 
When you get into trouble, if you are in his service, you 
will have to suffer indeed ; but with the Lord of Glory for 
your master, if you make mistakes or fall into error, all you 
have to do is to go and confess to Him, and He will forgive 
you quickly and smile upon you, and restore to you the joy 
of salvation if you have lost it. O, that we might learn the 
sweet lesson that " One is our Master," and that One is 
Christ in Heaven. Those men who are trying to serve the 
public, what do they gain ? I pity those men in Washing- 
ton who are trying to serve the public. We send them 
there and then turn and abuse them. Public men get noth- 
ing but abuse, after all. It is a hard thing to serve the 
public ; but it is a glorious thing to serve Christ. I would 
a thousand times rather have Him for my master than the 
cruel, heartless, wretched world. To know that we have 
only one master, but one to please and to serve ; to live 
with that idea in view all the while — one to please and one 



THE SIX " ONE THINGS:' 377 

to glorify — is a most blessed thing. He is not a hard mas- 
ter. He knows we are liable to mistakes, and He is ready 
and willing to forgive. If Christ is such a glorious Master 
should we not be willing to sacrifice ourselves to Him and 
give up all and follow Him, and turn our back upon this 
fleeting world and live for Him ? When our country was 
in danger, how men laid down their lives and gave up ev- 
erything for their country. The moment Abraham Lincoln 
called for six hundred thousand men you could hear the 
tramp of their feet in every direction, and the song went up 
from all quarters, " We are Coming, Father Abraham, six 
hundred thousand strong." All Mr. Lincoln had to do 
was to call, and the men came pouring in. Christ is calling 
for laborers. There are nations perishing for the want of 
Gospel tidings. W T e are a long time getting them to the 
world. America has men enough and money enough to do 
it all, to send the Gospel around this globe. It is high time 
that this Gospel was proclaimed in every town and village 
and hamlet throughout the whole world. It would be very 
easy if God's disciples would work together for it. 

Oh, my friends, if we have such a glorious master, who 
has passed through heaven and is sitting on the right hand 
of God, calling for laborers, shall we withhold our lives and 
affection ? Shall we not go into the vineyard and work for 
Him ? It is a glorious thing to have such a Master, a high 
exalted privilege to be a co-worker with God. Let us re- 
member our Chieftain has gone on before. He bears even 
now at the throne of God those scars He received here for our 
sakes ; He suffered and endured the cross, despising the 
shame, for the glory that was before Him. Shall we excuse 
ourselves from work ? Shall we say : " Do not send me, 
Lord ; send some one else ? " Oh, just go into the heat of 
the battle ! There has never been a time in your life or 
mine when we could work for our Lord and see such im- 
mediate fruits and results. It seems to me that all we have 



378 GLAD TIDINGS. 

to do is to sow with one hand and reap with the other. 
The harvest seems to be white ; the fields are waiting for 
the sickle ; the voice of our Master is calling us. Shall 
we hear that call in vain ? Are there not thousands that 
shall say " Lord, use me ! " You, mothers, can be used ; 
you young man, can be used among your companions ; you, 
gray haired men, can be used in your declining days. 
Shall we not all go to work for Him while yet there is time ? 
There is " one thing " that Paul speaks of : " One 
thing I do." Some one has said that the man who does 
one thing is a terrible man. I like to see those Christians 
who have a definite work and are doing it. I like to see 
them work in view of the heat and the burden of the day 
and never weaken. I suppose it will turn out in New 
York as it has in a great many other places where we 
have been, where a great many, having received a new 
spirit, are asking what they shall do. They are quick- 
ened into new life ; they are all full of soul, full of life, 
and the fire burns in their souls, and they want to publish 
the tidings of salvation. The cry is, " What shall I do ? " 
Let me say to you, find some one thing and do it well. Do 
not think anything you do for the Lord is a little work. 
What seems to you a little work may be the most mighty 
thing that has ever been done. You are a teacher in a 
Sunday-school, for example, and have a class of little 
boys ; you do not know what those boys may become. 
There may be a Luther, there may be a Whitfield, there 
may be a John Bunyan there. You may call these little 
boys to Christ, and they may go out and move the world 
as Luther did. No one ever thought that little monk 
would become so mighty in God's hand. He shook the 
whole world ; the spirit of the Living God came upon him. 
The dark clouds that settled upon his nation were lifted 
and beaten back. He drove them back. It is a great 
thing to turn our soul to Christ. • O, find some one thing 



THE SIX " ONE THINGS:' 



379 



to do for the Saviour, and do it well. " This one thing I 
do," said Paul. If he had folded his arms and said, " O 
dear, the Christians are so cold we cannot do anything ; if 
the Church was wide awake we might." Never you mind 
whether the church is wide-awake or not ; you keep wide- 
awake yourself. If you wait for the church you will never 
do anything. I made up my mind ten years ago that I 
would go on as if there were not another man in the world 
but me to do the work. I knew I had to give my account 
of stewardship. I suppose they say of me, " O, he is a 
radical ; he is a fanatic ; he only has one idea." Well, it 
is a glorious idea. I would rather have that said of me 
than be a man of ten thousand ideas and do nothing with 
them. To have one idea, and that idea Christ, that is the 
man for me ; that is the man we want now. A man that 
has one idea, one desire, one thought, and that idea, that 
thought, that desire Christ and Him crucified — that is 
what this groaning, perishing world wants now. It can 
get on without our rhetoric ; it can get on without our fine 
speeches, without our eloquence. It does not want them ; 
they want Christ and Him crucified. Let that old colored 
man find his work and go about it ; let that young lady 
find her work and do it. Don't go and get discouraged 
when you get to work because you don't find everything 
prosperous as you expected. You cannot tell what will 
prosper. What you think is prosperity may turn out to be 
the worst thing you could have done, and the thing you 
have least hope of may turn out to be your greatest success. 
An old woman who was seventy-five years old had a 
Sabbath-school two miles away among the mountains. 
One Sunday there came a terrible storm of rain, and she 
thought at first she would not go that day, but then she 
thought, " What if some one should go and not find me 
there ? " Then she put on her waterproof, and umbrella, 
and over-shoes, and away she went through the storm, 



380 GLAD TIDINGS. 

two miles away, to the Sabbath- school in the mountains. 
When she got there she found one solitary young man, and 
taught him the best she knew how all the afternoon. She 
never saw him again, and I don't know but the old woman 
thought her Sabbath had been a failure. That week the 
young man enlisted in the army, and in a year or two 
after the old woman got a letter from the soldier thanking 
her.f or going through the storm that Sunday. This young 
man thought that stormy day he would just go and see if 
the old woman was in earnest, and if she cared enough 
about souls to go through the rain. He found she came 
and taught him as carefully as if she was teaching the 
whole school, and God made that the occasion of winning 
that young man to Christ. When he lay dying in a hos- 
pital he sent the message to the old woman that he would 
meet her in heaven. Was it not a glorious thing that she 
did not get discouraged because she had but one school 
and scholar ? Be willing to work with one. Bear in mind 
the words, " This one thing 1 do." I live for souls and 
for eternity, I want to win some soul to Christ. If you 
want this and work for it, eternity alone can tell the result. 
May God give us a passion for souls. 

When Joshua was one hundred and ten years old, the 
old warrior lay dying and he called the Elders in Israel 
around him, and as they gathered around his bedside, he 
gave these words as his dying testimony. There stand 
the Elders in Israel and he was the last one of the great 
leaders ali^. Moses was gone, Aaron was gone ; he was 
the only man that was at Mount Sinai when the law was 
given from on high. They stood around his bedside and 
heard his dying testimony. How it shined out. " Behold 
this day I am going the way of all the earth ; and ye know 
in your hearts and in your souls that not one thing hath 
failed of all the good things that the Lord your God spoke 
concerning you." Is not that a high tribute? Had not 



THE SIX " ONE THINGS:' 381 

God kept his word to them ? The old warrior is going to 
rest, and this is his dying testimony : " Not one thing has 
failed. All things have been fulfilled." That is what the 
man has said who has tried God. Infidels won't try God, 
and of course they do not have such a peaceful end as the 
man who has taken God at His word. Let us look over 
the six one things. " One thing thou lackest." Do you 
lack Christ? Oh, take Him to-day ! " One thing I 
know." Do you know you have got Christ? If you do 
not, do not go out of this house to-day without knowing 
it ; step into the inquiry room and talk with some of the 
Christian men and women who know they have salvation. 
Make up your mind you will not leave this house to-day 
till you can look up and read your " title clear to mansions 
in the sky." I would rather do that than have a title to 
all New York. I would rather have some poor soul that 
I have won from this dark world to Christ come and weep 
over my grave when I am gone, than to have a monument 
of pure gold reaching from the earth to the skies. The 
next " one thing " is the " one thing that is needful." 
" One is your master," " Not one thing has failed," and 
" One thing I do," — it is the privilege of each one to have 
all these " one things " and to know that you have them. 



CHRIST'S CALL TO PETER. 



I want to call your attention this afternoon to the life 
of Peter. If you will just turn your Bibles to the first 
chapter of John, 40th verse, that is the first glimpse we 
get of him : " One of the two which heard John speak, and 
followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first 
findeth his owii brother, Simon, and saith unto him, we have 
foimd the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. 
And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, 
He said, Thou art Simon, the son of Jona ; thou shalt be 
called Cephas, which is by interpretatio7i, A stone." That is 
John's first account of Peter's and Christ's meeting, the 
first time they met. Then in Matthew, in the 4th chapter, 
1 8th verse, we find that they met again, and I have an idea 
that that account in John was that Peter was called to be 
a disciple, a follower of Christ ; but in Matthew, iv., 18, 
he is called from his business, his occupation, to become 
an Apostle and a worker in the vineyard. The 18th verse 
says : " And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two 
brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, 
casting a net into the sea : for they were fishers. And He 
saith unto them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of 
men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed 
Him." One thought I want to call your attention to is 
this : that before a man leaves his occupation, whatever 

his business may be, to give his whole life and service to 

382 



CHRIST S CALL TO PETER. 383 

.God, he must be sure he has got the call, " Follow thou 
me." I think there are great mistakes being made every 
year by men who would make good farmers, carpenters, 
and mechanics, perhaps by those who would make good 
business men, giving up their occupation and attempting 
to preach, to work for God. Now, I don't know how many 
men have come to me during the past few months and 
asked my advice about their going into the ministry. I 
never advised a man in my life to go into the ministry. I 
don't think I ever shall, for I think the ministry is too 
high a calling for a man to be influenced to enter it by 
anybody. He must get a higher call than from man. He 
wants to get a call from above. If God calls him into 
His service, to leave all and become " fishers of men," 
he won't fail. One reason why so many break down in the 
pulpit is because they run before they are sent, in fact 
before they are called at all, and the result is so many 
failures. Now let us be sure we have got a call before 
we give up our business to go into the service of the Lord, 
and one good way to tell whether you have got that call 
is : Has God used you ? I think Wesley had a good idea 
of it. When a man came to him and asked him if he 
should enter the ministry, he used to ask him : " Has God 
blessed you ? Have there been any souls converted under 
your efforts ? How is it when you preach ; do people go 
to sleep under it or wake up? Do some get mad and 
some get converted ? " He thought that was a good sign 
that they had been called to the ministry, for that is what 
the Gospel does, for it wakes up some and brings them 
to the feet of Christ. It is better if they get mad, for 
then there is some hope of their getting over it and be- 
coming Christians ; but if they go to sleep they may 
make up their minds they are not called. We don't want 
that. 

Now, undoubtedly Peter, after he met Christ, went 



3§4 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



about fishing, and undoubtedly he was a successful man 
at that work. He stayed there until Christ came along 
one day and told him, " Follow me." There is something 
very sweet about this, that when He called Peter to His 
service the thing He said was, " Follow me." Christ said 
to Peter, " Follow thou me," and as long as Peter followed 
Him he was successful. As long as any of us will follow 
Christ we will be successful, successful in everything we 
undertake to do. Christ never failed in anything He un- 
dertook to do. God never failed. It is man that is con- 
stantly failing ; but if we get our orders from above and 
God calls us we cannot fail. It is utterly impossible. So 
now we find Christ coming along and saying to Peter, 
"Follow me." And he left his fishing smack and business 
to go with Him. It says here they " forsook " them. It 
don't say they took their nets and their old boats, and 
disposed of them. They didn't stop to sell them, or have 
an auction of them. They had got the highest call a man 
ever got, and so they just left all and followed Him. It 
says in Luke that He gave them one chance. He told 
them to throw their net in and have one good haul, and 
when they attempted to pull in their net it broke, there 
was such a multitude of fishes in it ; and He called them 
away from their nets, and boats, and fish, and they followed 
Him straightway. And let me say to any man or woman 
here that if Christ calls you to go into His vineyard, and 
leave father and mother, you should go ; but be sure you 
have got the call. It is God who v/ill then stand by you, 
and you cannot fail. 

Now, in Matthew xiv., 28, we find Peter again. There 
we see that he has got into doubts. How many people 
get into doubting castles ? Peter got to doubting, and 
the result was he got into trouble, as all Christians do 
when they get to doubting. The Lord appeared to Him 
walking on the water, and he calls out to Him," " Lord, if 



CHRIST'S CALL TO PETER. 385 

it be thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water," and the 
Lord said, " Come ! " and when Peter was come down out 
of the ship he walked on the water to go to Jesus, but 
when he saw the wind was boisterous he was afraid. Ah, 
that is it. He got his eye off Christ and got to thinking 
about the wind and the waves and the storm. He had 
made a good start, a good beginning, and some of you 
young converts want to take heed right here. This is 
the great danger. You get to looking away from Christ ; 
you begin to look at the obstacles and the difficulties- in 
the way, and you get full of fear, and down you go. It 
was a noble act of Peter when he got out of that ship and 
put his foot on the water. He had got the word of God. 
God told him to do it, and the water was as hard as stone to 
him, because God's word was there, and he ought not to 
have doubted when he got half way over. His word was 
enough, and He could make that sea like a whole mountain 
of rock. There was no trouble if he had only kept his eye 
on Christ, looking to Jesus. Christ said, " Come," and he 
started all right ; but ah ! the wind made a great noise and 
he could hear the waves dashing right up against him, and 
he walked right on the top of them. His foot did not 
probably sink an eighth of an inch in the water. There 
was no danger, but he got his eye off of Christ, and he 
was full of doubts and fears, and the result was, down he 
went. How many have fallen in the same way. " But 
when he saw the wind was boisterous he was afraid ; and 
beginning to sink he cried, saying, Lord save me. And 
immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught 
him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore 
didst thou doubt ? " " What made you doubt, Peter ? 
Didn't I tell you to come ? Wherefore did you doubt ? " 
Oh, the Saviour don't like these doubts. I wish we could 
get the Church of God out of Doubting Castle. I wish we 
could get away from these doubts that hinder us so much. 

25 



386 GLAD TIDINGS. 

We are all the time looking at the wind and the waves, 
and are full of doubt. How many Christians go through 
the world trembling all the time and all their life, because 
they are afraid of the storm and of the troubles they think 
may come upon them. Just think of the promises of God. 
Just let us walk right out on them. The Lord has pro- 
mised never to forsake us. We have nothing to fear. 
" Fear not." All through Scripture that word comes out 
again and again. " Fear not ! I have thee by the right 
hand." 

I want now to call your attention to Peter's confession. 
He made an open confession. I think the edict had gone 
forth from the Sanhedrim the day before that if any one 
should confess Christ, "put him out." They would not 
have Him, and so now, it might have been the very next 
day, He is trying His disciples. " When Jesus came into 
the coasts of Cagsarea and Philippi, He asked His disciples, 
saying, " Whom do men say that I am ? " Perhaps this 
edict had gone forth. " You are around among the people, 
preaching in the towns and villages, and whom do the peo- 
ple say I am ? What do they say ? " " Well, some say 
that Thou art John the Baptist, and some say Eli as, and 
others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets," and He saith unto 
them, " But whom say ye that I am ? " There was the ques- 
tion brought home to them. They had strong faith in Him, 
and strong love for Him, but they would not confess Him, 
because if they did they would go out of the Synagogue. 
" Now, who do you say I am ? " " And Simon Peter an- 
swered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God." That is who He was — Christ, the Son of the living 
God. That put Peter out of the Synagogue. He could 
not get in after that. He had made his confession. " And 
Jesus answered and said unto Him : Blessed art thou Si- 
mon Barjona ; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." It seems 



CHRIST'S CALL TO PETER. 387 

as if Christ was always, when down here, was all the time 
trying to find some one willing to confess Him. It was 
to Him like a cup of water to a thirsty man to find in this 
dark world a man ready to say He was all He professed 
to be. There are men now trying to make out that Jesus 
was not the Lord divine, the Lord of glory, the Lord of 
heaven ; that He was not what He professed to be ; but, 
ah ! thank God ! there were some men that believed in 
Him, stood by Him, confessed Him, were not ashamed of 
Him ; and, thank God ! they live to-day, their influence 
lives to-day, here in New York, at the close of the nine- 
teenth century, because they took their stand and were 
noj ashamed to confess Him. 

But now turn to the 9th chapter of Luke, 28th verse. 
Here is Peter turning his eyes toward Rome, getting to 
worship the Saints, and not knowing the difference between 
Christ and Moses and Elias. The idea that Peter should 
put Christ on the same level with Elias and Moses. " And 
it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, He 
took Peter and John and James and went up into a moun- 
tain to pray. And as He prayed, the fashion of His coun- 
tenance was altered, and His raiment was white and 
glistening. And, behold, there talked with Him two men, 
which were Moses and Elias ; who appeared in glory, and 
spake of His decease which He should accomplish at Jeru- 
salem. But Peter and they that were with Him were heavy 
with sleep ; and when they were awake they saw His glory 
and the two men that stood with Him. And it came to 
pass as they departed from Him Peter said unto Jesus, 
Master, it is good for us to be here. And let us make 
three tabernacles, one for Thee and one for Moses and one 
for Elias; not knowing what he said." 

That is what some men are trying to do — put Christ on 
the same level with other men. They say, "Yes, Christ 
was a very good man ; so was Moses, and so was Elias. 



388 GLAD TIDINGS. 

He was a very good man, and we have a profound respect 
for Him, but don't say He was divine." Why, this 
makes Christ out the greatest liar in the world, if He is not 
divine, if He was not more than Moses and Elias. He was 
a liar and the greatest deceiver that ever came into this 
world if He was not divine. God says, " Thou shalt have 
no other Gods before Me." Look at the millions that are 
worshipping Him to-day. Every one of them are thus 
breaking the first commandment : not only breaking that, 
but it is a commandment the violation of which God 
punishes as He does no others. It seemed to be a sin 
that God abominated above all others. How He punished 
the Jews because they had another God. God is a jealqus 
God, and do you think He would allow these millions for 
i, 800 years to worship His Son and adore Him if He was 
not God in the flesh ? Ah, my friends, if you want to 
please a father speak well of his son. You are driven to 
one "of two alternatives — that He was either the Lord or 
else the greatest imposter that ever came into this world. 
" While He thus spake, there came a cloud, and over- 
shadowed them ; and they feared as they entered into the 
cloud. And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, 
This is my beloved Son; hear Him. And when the voice 
was passed Jesus was found alone." You see God snatched 
them both away and said, " That is my beloved Son ; hear 
Him.' 1 '' When Peter came to put Moses and Elias on a 
level with His Son, God would not have it, and snatched 
them both away, and they have never been on earth since. 
My friends, let us worship Christ, who is God. God 
won't have us worshipping men. Peter is rather getting 
his eyes towards ritualism. He is drifting along towards 
Rome. Let us, my friends, bear in mind that God is a 
jealous God, and He will not have us worshipping Saints. 
We are to worship Him, and we are to go to Him with all 
our sins and confess them to Him. I think there is one 



CHRIST'S CALL TO PETER. 389 

case in the New Testament where a man did confess his 
sins to a priest — and he went right out afterwards and hung 
himself. He didn't get any relief for it. If he had gone 
to Christ he would have got mercy undoubtedly, but he 
went to a priest, and then went right out and hung himself. 
My friends, let us bear in mind that all the men in the 
world and the saints that ever lived cannot help us when 
it comes down to the wants of the soul ; but, thanks be to 
God, Jesus Christ can, and we will go to Him and confess 
our sins, and He is willing and able to forgive them. 

Let us look into the 6th chapter of John for a moment. 
Peter believed in assurance. Look at the 66th verse: 
"From that time many of His disciples went back and 
walked no more with Him. Then said Jesus unto the 
twelve, Will ye also go away. Then Simon Peter an- 
swered Him, Lord r to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life." That is an old saying. How has 
it rung down through the ages. I should like to ask you 
here to-day, suppose you leave Christ, to whom can you go ? 
Go to the world : what can it give you ? Where are you 
going to ? To whom can we go ? Peter was right. They 
had left all for Jesus, and they had no desire to go back. 
I never saw a Christian in my life with his eyes open that 
wanted to go back. He has got nowhere to go. The 
world is spoiled for him. Peter had got his eyes upon the 
better world, where sickness and death and sorrow never 
comes, and do you think a man having his affection set 
upon that City and having got a glimpse of it, wants to 
leave for this world again? This world is empty and 
hollow, and cannot satisfy the longing of our heart. And 
I never saw a man living for this world that was satisfied ; 
but Christ satisfies the longings of the heart. Here Christ 
had been lifting the standard pretty high on account of 
those men whom He knew had an empty profession, and 
no love for Him. Christ wanted heart-love. Many fol- 



39 o GLAD TIDINGS. 

lowed Him without love, and He knew that when trials and 
persecutions came they would all leave Him, and they 
might as well go that afternoon ; and He lifted the stand- 
ard pretty high ; and He turns to Peter and says, " Are 
you going to leave me, too ? " Peter says no. " Lord, to 
whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
And so if there is a Christian here to-day who wants to 
turn back, where are you going to turn ? What can the 
world give ? What can the god of this world do for you ? 
He is a liar and a deceiver, and every man and woman 
under his power has been and will be deceived down to 
the end of time. 

But now I am going to Peter's fall, for that is the object 
of this lecture. I want to call your attention to the fall of 
Peter, so as to warn these young converts and Christians 
that have just commenced a new life. You will find the 
first step of his fall in Matthew xxvi. ^Z ' " Peter answered 
and said unto Him, Though all men shall be offended be- 
cause of Thee, yet will I never be offended. Jesus said 
unto him, Verily I say unto thee that this night before the 
cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto 
Him, " Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny 
Thee. Likewise also said all the disciples." Now the 
thought I want to call your attention to is this : Peter was 
self-confident, and wherever you see a Christian so confi- 
dent and boasting of himself and reflecting on others, you 
may doubt the permanency of his zeal. Peter tells the 
Lord that, " though James and John and all deny Thee, I 
will not deny Thee." He casts a reflection on all of them, 
as if he was stronger than the rest. There is one thing the 
Lord cannot have, and that is His disciples boasting in 
their strength. When a man thinks he has got a good deal 
of strength, and is self-confident, you may look for his 
downfall. It may be years before it comes to light, but it 
is already commenced. Peter did not fall all at once, but 



CHRIST'S CALL TO PETER. 



39 1 



it was gradual and sure. The thing to do is to stand, and 
take heed lest ye fall. Beware ! We have got terrible 
enemies, and we are very weak in ourselves. All our 
strength is borrowed strength. We get it from Christ. I 
dont think there is a disciple in this house but what would 
fall in sin within twenty-four hours if it were not for the 
wonderful grace of the Lord Jesus Christ keeping us. See 
how the most wonderful men of Scripture have fallen, and 
fallen on their strongest points. Look at Moses, the very 
last man that would have spoken unadvisedly with his lips, 
slow of speech ; you would not think that was the man 
that would strike that rock and be kept out of the promised 
land. You would not think Elijah, who could stand 
against Herod and all his royalty, and all those eight hun- 
dred and fifty prophets of Baal, and against the whole 
nation, was going to be scared by one woman. He sup- 
posed he was strong, but a message came from the Queen, 
and she said, "Thy life will be like those of the false 
prophets in twenty-four hours," and away he went off into 
the desert, and the Lord found him there hidden away. 
When you find men like Elijah, Moses and Peter, able, 
strong men, falling, it ought to make us tremble and bear 
in mind that our strength is in God and not in ourselves. 
We cannot afford to be self-confident. I tremble for these 
young converts. They say they are going to live for Christ 
all their days, and they are going to stand up for Him if 
the rest don't. That is not the kind of language. No, my 
friends, you ought to be very humble. Keep low, and if 
your strength is in God, and you are looking to Him for 
strength all the time, you will be able to stand ; and other- 
wise you will go. When Peter says, " I will not deny 
Thee," the Lord told him he would deny Him. Peter 
says, "I will die for Thee." "You will ? ' "Yes." 
Then the Lord answers, " This very night, before the cock 
crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." " What, Lord, you don't 



392 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



think I would do such a thing as that ? " And so these 
young converts don't think they are going to fail, and there 
is the danger. We have got some terrible enemies, and 
therefore we ought to walk very humbly, and if we do so 
God will strengthen and keep us, but the moment we get 
self-confident and lifted up in our own sight, then the dan- 
ger comes. There was a time when I was first converted 
when I used to think that when I got to be a Christian of 
twenty years standing I should rejoice, because there would 
be no danger of my falling then. My friends, there is 
more danger now than there was then. Do you know 
why ? Because the more useful a man becomes the better 
target he is for the devil. The devil is more watchful to 
see if he cannot trip him up, and the fall is a great deal 
more for a man that is risen to be used of God. The 
higher the man gets the greater the fall. Therefore, every 
man that is used of God ought to be very humble and keep 
down in the dust ; if he don't the enemy will come in 
some unguarded moment and he will fall into some sin. 
Not that we are going to lose our souls, not that Elijah or 
Peter were lost, but the devil is trying to weaken Peter's 
testimony, and how many good people there are in the 
world that have lost their testimony. Their testimony now 
is gone, and God won't use them. The wiles of the 
devil are many : first, he moves all hell to keep a man 
from coming to Christ, and if he does come in spite of the 
devil he moves all hell to keep his mouth closed, that he 
shall not speak for God, and if he cannot do that he uses 
all hell to blacken his character, and he will start lies 
about him. Some one says " a lie will go around the world 
before Truth gets his boots on," and the world will take it 
up and want to believe it whether they do or not. And 
when you come to trace it to its fountain-head, " Well," 
they say, " it was such a good joke they wanted it to go 
anyway, and they would not change it and it went." The 



CHRIST'S CALL TO PETER. 



393 



world likes to believe a lie ; and so the children of God 
walk very circumspectly and carefully, so that their enemies 
should not have this chance of bringing up and blazing 
forth to the world all our failings. Peter got so self-confi- 
dent that the Lord knew he would not be of any use after 
He was gone, and so He had to let Satan sift him. The 
Lord said to Peter, " Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath 
desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat, but I 
have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not ; and when thou 
are converted strengthen thy brethren." 

But now the hour comes for Peter's fall, and if you turn 
to Luke you will find he gives a very good account'of it. 
I think it is the 2 2d chapter of Luke, beginning at the 
45th verse : " And when He rose up from prayer, and was 
come to His disciples, He found them sleeping for sorrow." 
Now, He told them not to sleep. " Watch and pray," He 
had said, and they had done just what He told them not 
to do — they had gone to sleep. Now, the second step of 
Peter's downfall, after he became so confident, was his 
going to sleep after the Lord had told him he was to watch. 
One would have thought when the Lord told him he would 
deny Him that he would have kept himself awake, but now 
as the Lord was passing through that dreadful agony of 
Gethsemane and sweating great drops of blood — " and His 
sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to 
the ground," — these men could fall asleep and Peter among 
them. And the devil can do most anything he wants to 
when we are asleep. The soul is never asleep. Bear that 
in mind ; and I believe nineteen-twentieths of the people 
of America to-day are sound asleep. That is the reason 
why they cannot tell the difference between the theatre 
and the opera and the church. A mother has a darling 
son, a youth of promise, and she sees him fond of the 
theatre and the opera and gives no check. She begins to 
wake up and by-and-by, finds herself before the corpse 



394 GLAD TIDINGS. 

of this son, and then she realizes the truth at last. " Oh," 
she says, " what have I done ? I have put the cup to his 
lips, and have fostered his love for the theatre, I have 
plunged him the first step downwards." Oh, may God 
wake up all the fathers and the mothers before it is too 
late. 

Peter got to sleep and the devil could do anything with 
him after he was asleep. The next thing he wakes up 
out of his sleep and he is not in communion with Christ, 
he is a sleepy christian ; and when they come to arrest 
Christ, Peter draws his sword and smote the servant of the 
high priest and cut off his ear. That was not the spirit of 
Christ. He had to go and heal that man's ear, and He 
rebuked Peter and told him to put up his sword. He 
did not come to ruin men, but to save them. He came 
to bless, to keep, and I should have thought that that 
would have broken Peter's heart to have had Christ heal 
that man's ear. Undoubtedly there was no scar there. But 
now they start back into the city with Christ. They have 
got him under arrest, and the next thing is, Peter follows 
Him afar off. This is the fourth step of Peter's downfall. 
When christians get to following Christ afar off you may 
know it won't be long before they will deny Him. If there 
was any night when Christ needed Peter it was that night. 
If there was any night when He needed His little band 
around Him it was that night. He did not want to be for- 
saken that night, but at that very hour Peter was following 
him afar off. How many christians to-day are following 
Him afar off. How the cause of Christ to-day needs every- 
one that professes to be a follower of Jesus, and how we 
ought to come out and follow Him boldly and gladly. The 
first words were " Follow me," as He took Peter from his 
business and now he follows him afar off. The next thing 
is we find him with the enemies of Jesus Christ. It won't 
be long before from following afar off we will be with 



CHRIST'S CALL TO PETER. 



395 



Christ's enemies. There he is among Christ's ememies. 
That is the next step, and at last one comes in and 
looks at him and says, " You are one of His disci- 
ples?" "No, I am not." He denies it. The man that 
has been with him for three years says, " I am not His 
disciple. I don't know Him." " I believe you are." 
" Well, I am not." I suppose he thought that was the end 
of it ; that it was all settled. A little while after another 
came and looked at him, saying : " This man is one of that 
Galilean's followers." " I am not," says Peter." " I am 
not. Don't you accuse me of that. I tell you I don't know 
anything about it." " Well, you look very much like a 
man I have seen with Him. I was out there in the wilder- 
ness when he fed the five thousand, and if you are not one 
of the men who passed around the bread you look very 
much like him." And Peter says, "lam not the man. 
Don't you accuse me of that." Thus Peter denies Him.. 
And by-and-by another man comes up and he, too, recog- 
nizes Peter and says, " Surely thou are one of His disciples 
and Peter denies Him again. The third man comes up 
and says, " Thou are one of His disciples, for thy speech 
betrayeth thee." And Peter got full of anger. His 
wrath was kindled and he cried out with an oath and 
swore, " I am not." I cannot use his language. Think 
of Peter swearing and cursing ! Undoubtedly, he was 
in the habit of swearing and cursing before Christ met 
him and the old sin came back upon him and he swore 
at Christ and said, " I never knew him." And away out in 
the street he heard a cock crow, and when the cock crew 
Christ turned round and looked at him. All he did was to 
look at him. He might have said. "Is it true you don't 
know Me ? You have been with Me three years. Have 
you forgotten when your mother was crying for help you 
wanted Me to raise her from sickness and make her well. 
Have you forgotten how you wanted Me to make three 



396 GLAD TIDINGS. 

tabernacles, one for Moses, one for Elias and one for me ? 
Is it true you have forgotten how, when you walked on the 
water, you began to sink and cried to me for help that you 
might not perish ?" He might have reminded him of that, 
but the Lord didn't do that. He did not put the knife in 
him. All He did was to turn and give him one look, and 
it just broke Peter's heart. If there is a backslider here 
to-day may you just catch a glimpse of Christ looking down 
into your hearts. It broke the heart of Peter, and I can 
see him springing to his feet and going out and weeping 
bitterly. No one on earth knows what he suffered that night. 
I can imagine some of the disciples coming and telling him 
what had taken place, how Jesus had been condemned to 
death, and next, he hears that the Saviour is dead and that 
they have buried His body, and all that night how much 
Peter must have suffered. I can imagine it in his sleep 
even. Oh, what bitterness ! He was passing through the 
agonies of Gethsemane himself now. I can see him weep- 
ing and wailing, " Oh, that Christ had only forgiven me be- 
fore He died ! " He had no hope of His resurrection. He 
had forgotten all that Christ said about His coming back. 
But see how tenderly Christ treated him. When He came 
out of the grave He said, " Go back and tell My disciples." 
No doubt Peter thought he would be counted out. But 
no. He leaves a message for Peter : " Go tell Peter that 
I will meet him in Galilee." I can imagine, when the dis- 
ciple came to Peter and told him, " The Lord is raised ; 
He sent a message to you," that Peter exclaimed, " What ! 
did He speak my name ? " " Yes, He said go and tell 
the disciples and Peter. He put your name in." " Oh," 
says Peter, " thank God for that ! I will see Him," and 
away went Peter to see the Lord. He was eager to see 
Him, and we are told by Paul here in Corinthians that he 
met Him alone. No one on earth knows what took place 
at that interview, but I can imagine the first time Peter saw 






CHRIST'S CALL TO PETER. 397 

Him he fell at His feet and washed them with his tears, 
and cried, " Lord, forgive me ! " But his self-confidence is 
all gone. When he met Him there at that breakfast on the 
sea shore, when Christ prepared the feast — what a feast it 
must have been ! — He called them all around Him and 
then said, " Peter, do you love Me more than these ? Do 
you love Me more than John ? " What does Peter say ? 
He says, "Lord, you know." And then He says again, 
" Feed My lambs." " Lovest thou Me more than these, 
Peter," said He, the second time, and then He said it the 
third time. It grieved poor Peter, I suppose, because he 
had denied Him three times ; and the last words the Lord 
said to him after He had fed him were, " Feed My Lambs." 
And the last words before were, "Follow thou Me." 

O, Blessed Saviour ! if there is a wanderer from the 
fold here to-day, bring him back. If there is one following 
afar off let him come to-day. I wish I had more time to 
talk about this wonderful character, but may it be a great 
help to us, and may we be kept from falling. 



DECISION. 



You will find my text this afternoon in the 27th chapter 
of the gospel according to Matthew, part of the 22d verse: 
" What shall I then do with Jesus which is called Christ ? " 
Our last Sunday here has come, and I am speaking to 
many to-day that will probably not be here again. Even 
if you should all want to come you probably would not be 
able to ; so to-day I want to press this question home upon 
you. For ten weeks we have been trying to preach to you 
about Christ, and tell you something about Him. To be 
sure we have done it very poorly, but now the time has 
come for us to close. It remains with you to say whether 
these meetings shall close and leave you out of the ark or 
in it. A good deal depends upon this afternoon's meeting. 
A solemn question and a personal one is before you ; not 
what your neighbors and friends are going to do, but 
" what shall I do with Jesus ? " Pilate was in great diffi- 
culty. This question had been sprung upon him, as it 
were, suddenly. He had not heard about Christ for ten 
weeks as you have, nor, as it may be, for twenty-five or forty 
or fifty years. He had not been proclaimed to Pilate as He 
has been proclaimed in this Christian land. We live with- 
in sight of the cross and of our Saviour glorified in heaven, 
and Pilate only saw Him in His humiliation, when He was 
condemned and cast out by His own nation. He was a 
heathen man, wakened perhaps suddenly early one Satur 






DECISION. 



399 



day morning, between the hours of six and seven, called 
into the judgment hall in great haste to pass sentence 
upon a man that they wanted to have put to death at once. 
They wanted him to sign the death-warrant. They did 
not want any trial or examination. But when Pilate looked 
at Him, he saw that he was a different prisoner from any 
he had had before. Pilate asked a few questions : "What 
do you bring against Him ? " They said, " If He was not 
a malefactor, we would not bring Him to you." So he 
begins to question the prisoner, and before he had talked 
with Him long, he was convinced that never was such a 
prisoner brought before him. His judgment told him to 
release the man, his conscience told him to release Him. 
His heart, even his treacherous deceitful heart that was 
desperately wicked above all things, that very heart said 
" Release Him." His wife sent word, " Have thou nothing 
to do with that just man, for I have suffered much in a 
dream concerning Him ; " but still Pilate had not the 
moral courage to stand and release the man. Herein he 
was not true to his own convictions. 

I believe that is the trouble with thousands of people 
that have been attending these meetings. I believe that 
if every man and woman that has been here had been 
true to their convictions, there would have been thousands 
more saved. Many a man and woman has gone out of 
this hall convinced that they were sinners, and that they 
ought to receive Christ, but yet they have rejected Him, 
just as Pilate did. Pilate was a vacillating character, 
wayward, and undecided. Reuben is spoken of as " un- 
stable as water ; " and that is the character of Pilate. 
There are hundreds in this city in the same state of mind. 
Pilate was thoroughly convinced and aroused, knowing 
down deep in his heart that he ought to receive Christ ; 
but he was not willing to decide. People are vacillating. 
Another mistake Pilate made was that he was influenced by 



400 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



others. He first let the judgment go out of his own hands. 
He tried to get others to decide the matter for him, and 
every step he took carried him deeper and deeper into the 
pit. He got into difficulty every time he turned round, 
because he had not the moral courage to decide for him- 
self what he would do with Christ. There was another 
thing that weighed with him, and that was his worldly 
prospects and influence. If he decided against Him, he 
was afraid he would lose the favor of the Emperor of 
Rome ; or if he decided against them, he might lose the 
favor of the leading men at Jerusalem. He might have 
removed every difficulty, but he was afraid; he loved 
place and power better than truth and justice, and he was 
willing to sacrifice justice and honor and everything that 
was pure that he might have position. How many there 
are in this audience who are doing the same thing ! They 
know that they ought to be Christians ; that they ought to 
receive Christ ; that they ought to take advantage of the 
occasion that God has offered them ; and yet, on account 
of some worldly advice of friends, or because some one 
will laugh at you, some one that may scoff and ridicule, 
you have been vacillating and halting and wavering for all 
these weeks. May not the decision be made to-day ? One 
solemn truth comes to me to-day, and that is, that all these 
men that would not decide for Christ and decided against 
Him, how punishment came upon them ! There was An- 
nas ; we are told that in the next generation the mob of 
Jerusalem tore down his house and dragged his son through 
the streets and scourged and killed him. That was a ter- 
rible judgment. We are told that Judas went out and 
hung himself. We find that Caiaphas, who was High 
Priest, and wanted to keep his office and position, and 
would not dare to decide in favor of Christ, lost his office 
the very next year. We are told that Herod was sent off 
to exile and banishment, and died a terrible death ; and 



DECISION. 401 

Pilate, who was the central Governor of Judea, and had 
had the office but a little while at this time, was soon after- 
ward displaced from the very office that he had tried so 
hard to keep. He went off into exile, and remorse settled 
down upon him, and we have it on pretty good authority 
that he committed suicide. What a grave mistake he 
made ! How his name might have blazed out upon this 
inspired Word ! How it might have been handed down 
gloriously through the ages, with the names of Peter, 
James, and John, with Nicodemus and Joseph ! Thor- 
oughly convinced that he ought to be in favor of Christ, he 
had not the moral courage to stand by his conviction. 
Lost, lost, lost, for time and for eternity for want of decis- 
ion ! I believe in my soul that there are more at this day 
being lost in New York for want of decision than for any 
other thing. 

■ O, my friends, what is your decision to-day ? What 
are you going to do with Christ ? That is the question to- 
day. I do not care much about the sermon ; if I could 
only get this text down into your heart, get it down deep 
into your soul, I should feel I had accomplished my work 
here. It is not preaching you want now ; it is to come to 
a decision, to decide what you will do with God's own 
Son ? He gave Him up freely for us all. Will you not 
receive Him ? It is to have Him for our Saviour now, or at 
some future day to have Him for our judge. Pilate, like 
every other sinner, wanted to get rid of the responsibility. 
He did not like to be pressed to a decision. He shifted 
the responsibility to Herod. But. even Herod refused to 
take His life, and sent Him back ; so Pilate tries again. 
He thinks he has got a plan that will work. He puts it 
out of his own power — foolish man ! He ought to have 
decided " it " himself, and not left the multitude to decide. 
He said, " I will put the question to them now and get 
them to decide.'' Poor deluded man ! He thought they 

26 



402 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



would choose Jesus instead of Barabbas. He did not 
know the depravity of man's heart, and how they were in 
league with hell against Christ. He took the murderer 
and highwayman, and asked them which one he should re- 
lease, and the multitude lifted up their voice and said, " Re- 
lease unto us Barabbas." After they had made that de- 
cision the poor disappointed Governor said to them, "What 
shall I do with Jesus that was called Christ ? " And they 
answered, " Let Him be crucified." 

Let us look at Barabbas. It seems to me that there is 
no case in the whole Bible where the great doctrine of 
substitution is brought out better than in this one. There 
was a man condemned in one of our Western cities. 
What troubled him the most was, that the night he was to 
be executed, they were making the gallows in the prison. 
He heard them sawing the planks and driving the nails ; 
and as he heard he trembled from head to foot. This 
cross might have been made in the prison where Barabbas 
was confined, and these two thieves to be crucified with 
Christ might have been associated with Barabbas, and he 
might have been the ring-leader in crime. Barabbas 
knows he has to die, that there is no hope ; he has perhaps 
heard them making the crosses, one for him, and the others 
for each of his two companions. At last the executioner 
comes. He hears the footfall in the hall, as he takes one 
man from his cell, and then another, and there is poor 
Barabbas trembling from head to foot. He thinks, " In a 
few moments I will be lead to execution, and will be nailed 
to the cross, to die its terrible death ; " and while Barab- 
bas trembles, the executioner comes and unlocks the door, 
and throws it open and says, " Barabbas, you are free ! " 
" What ! free ? Am I free ? " " Yes, you are free." 
" What do you mean ? How comes this ? Who set me 
free?" "Pilate asked the people which should be free, 
yourself or Jesus of Nazareth, and the multitude have 



DECISION. 403 

chosen you to be released, and Christ is to be put to death 
in your stead." What joy, what good news it must have 
been for poor Barabbas ! And think, my friends, what 
guilt there was in that multitude making the choice of 
Barabbas ! I never saw any one in my life but thought it 
was one of the most cruel cases in this world. 

But did you ever stop to think that what you are doing 
is worse ? The man that chooses this world has chosen 
much worse than the Jews did. I would rather choose 
Barabbas than the god of this world. If you reject Jesus 
Christ, bear in mind that Satan is your god ; he leads you 
on with an unseen hand. He is your tempter, and is try- 
ing to lure you away from the world of light, to leave you 
in the dark caverns of eternal death and ruin. Thanks be 
to God, there is hope to-day ; this very hour you can choose 
Him and serve Him. O, make your choice to-day. It is 
not between Jesus and Barabbas now ; it is between the 
Lord of Glory, the Prince of Peace, or the Devil of Hell. 
Every one has to decide whether he wants to decide or 
not. Some people say, " I do not propose to decide this 
question at once. I am going to be neutral." No one 
can have Christ presented to him but he has to decide. 
You will either decide to reject or to receive Him. There 
is but one alternative ; if you reject Him you will receive 
the devil. If we would stop putting this question over 
from day to day unanswered, if that little girl sitting by 
her mother would just say what she would do, how happy 
we should all be. There are some here this afternoon who 
have come, perhaps, to scoff and laugh. Dear friends, are 
you going to scoff on ? Are you going to die in your sins 
and be lost ? When Jesus comes this afternoon and knocks 
at the door of your heart and wants you to become a Chris- 
tian, are you going to reject Him ? Some say, " Well, I 
can't give up the world." Had you rather have the world 
than have Christ? Had you rather have the god of 



404 GLAD TIDINGS. 

pleasure than the God of Heaven ? There is no way to 
stand neutral on this question. You must have one or the 
other ; you must have the god of earth or the God of 
Heaven. I pity the man or woman who is living for this 
world. You will not only be disappointed now, but you 
will be disappointed all through this life. The god of 
pleasure can never lift you up and make your heart to re- 
joice. Solomon looked abroad over this land for that 
which would satisfy the yearnings of his soul. He picked 
up worldly pleasure, looked at it, and then laid it away 
and said, " Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ! " There are 
many who live for wealth and social position. What is it 
after you have got it ? It is like the boy running after a 
bubble ; when you get it it is gone. Oh, that this text 
would sink deep into the hearts of all here, that they might 
be made to realize their need of Christ ! Don't go out of 
this hall and say you will forget this text. Just let it sink 
into your heart and say, " What shall I do with Jesus ? " 
Won't you just stop a moment and think, What shall I 
do with Him ? One of two things you must do ; you 
must either receive Him or reject Him. You receive Him 
here and He will receive you there; you reject Him here 
and He will reject you there. O, may every soul make up 
its mind where it will spend eternity ! Whether it will be 
found in the world of light or in the dark caverns of eternal 
woe. 

There was a young woman dying. Her father and 
mother were wealthy. They had brought her up with 
every wish gratified. She had lived in luxury. In worldly 
things she had wanted nothing. Her parents bestowed 
upon her all that wealth could buy ; but at last she was 
taken sick, and when she came down to the bank of the 
river she said : " Father and mother, won't you go with 
me, it is dark ? " They wept bitterly over the dying child, 
but they told her they could not go. Then she wanted 



DECISION. 405 

them to pray for her, but they didn't know how to pray. 
The father and the mother stood at her bedside and sent 
for a minister, but it was too late. When he arrived she 
was dead. My friends, that dark hour will come to all of 
us. We must pass through the valley of the shadow of 
death, and if we have not Christ it will be very dark. A 
man became anxious for the spiritual welfare of a friend. 
He went and asked him if he would not come to Christ. 
The man was occupied in business ; he didn't have time to 
seek the Kingdom of God. Time passed on, and one day 
this kind friend heard that the man to whom he had spoken 
was sick, that he had caught cold. The friend went to the 
sick man's bed-side, hoping to win the soul to Christ. He 
spoke to him about Jesus, and begged him not to delay 
repentance. The man said to the friend, " I wish you 
would come in to-morrow ; I don't feel well enough to talk 
now, but come in to-morrow, and I will be better." The 
next day he went again, and the man said, " Don't talk to 
me now ; I am not well enough yet." The next day he 
went again, but the doctor had given orders that no one 
should go into the room where the invalid was. Then the 
Christian friend begged of the wife to let him go in, but 
the wife said the doctor had given orders that no one 
should see him. And I believe that many ungodly physi- 
cians do this just to keep Christians away from dying sin- 
ners. They don't believe in God, and are willing to see 
others die without a knowledge of the Saviour. The friend 
called the next day and was again told that no one. was 
permitted to enter the room. The man was dead when he 
went the next day. I believe that man intended to receive 
Christ. There are many who intend to receive Christ but put 
it off to a more convenient time. W 7 hat Satan wants is for 
you to put it off until to-morrow. He knows that to-mor- 
row never comes. 

Don't delay the answer to this great question, "W T hat 



4 o6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

shall I do with Christ ? " Accept Him now. When you 
are sick it is no time to receive Jesus. When death comes 
He often steals in unawares. Some men don't know that 
death is coming until they are hurried away into the other 
world without any preparation. How much do you think 
some lost one would give if he had his life to live 
over again ? How much do you think Agrippa would give 
to be in Paul's place now ? How much do you think those 
men who took part in the services and heard Christ preach 
to them would give if they had the opportunity you have 
here this afternoon ? Oh, if I could go to the borders of 
the lost world, and call upon one soul, and bring him on 
this platform, and let him tell the awful horror and woe of 
being separated from Christ, how terrible it would be. 
Why, I believe that Caiaphas would be very glad to ex- 
change places with John ; but it is too late now. All the 
opportunities are gone. They risked all for wealth and 
station. And what was the wealth and the position these 
men held ? It was only for a few months or years, and then 
God changed their countenances and sent them away. The 
rich man would have been glad to exchange places with 
Lazarus, who sat with the dogs at his door. What must 
have been his misery when he saw from his terrible posi- 
tion Lazarus among the saved. It is a good deal better to 
be a poor beggar, with Christ in your heart, than to have 
the applause of this world and die without hope. 

Well, I imagine that a good many say, " How am I to 
receive Christ ? " Well, my friends, you are to receive Him 
just as you are to receive anything else. You are to take 
Jesus just as a friend who gives you a gift. Why not re- 
ceive Him ? You reject Him, and of course you must be 
without a gift. You must be without Christ. If you re- 
ceive Him then He is yours for time and eternity. 
Now, I don't know any better illustration of receiving 
Christ than matrimony. I see some of you smiling, but 



DECISION. 4 7 

my friends, it is a Bible illustration. Speaking of the ten 
virgins, He says that He was the bridegroom and the vir- 
gins the bride. In Revelations it is said, " Blessed is he 
who shall be at the marriage supper of the Lamb." You 
remember how a servant was sent to seek a wife for Isaac. 
He met her at the well, and as soon as he had told his 
errand he wanted to be off next morning. He wanted to 
take her to his master immediately. But they said, " Don't 
take her off now ; let her remain with us a few days." 
But he wanted to be off, and they concluded to call Re- 
bekah and see if she would accompany the servant. Then 
they called Rebekah and said to her, ll Wilt thou go with 
this man ? " She said, " Yes, I will go ; I will accept of 
the invitation." It was an offer extended to her. Now, 
that servant could not say that he loved Rebekah. He 
had never seen her before, but the Lord guided him. I 
can tell you, my friends, that Jesus Christ knows all about 
you, and He loves you with an untiring love. It is just so 
with any lady whose hand is asked in marriage by a man. 
She can receive him or reject him, as she wishes. That is 
just the way with Christ. You can receive Christ — give up 
father, mother, home, if need be, and receive Christ. In 
marriage the man takes the first place in your heart. You 
would not give up your home, your advantages, all your 
friends, if you did not love the person. So it is with 
Christ. You have been told about Him, read about Him, 
and I have come to-day and asked you if you would accept 
Him. I have come to-day to get a bride for my Master. I 
have come to plead Christ's cause among you. Out of 
these thousands of women are there not some who are 
willing to become Christ's people ? Is there one who will 
go with this man ? Now, just answer it in your own heart 
and say, " By the grace of God I will accept Jesus. This 
very day and this very hour I will become His." Now, 
just think a moment and answer the question, "What shall 
I do with the Jesus who is called Christ ? " 



408 GLAD TIDINGS. 

I remember when Mr. Sankey and myself were in Chica- 
go preaching. We had been five Sunday nights on the life 
of Christ. We had taken Him from the cradle, and on the 
fifth night we had just got Him up to where we have 
Him to-day. He was in the hands of Pilate, and Pilate 
didn't know what to do with Him. I remember it distinct- 
ly, for I made one of the greatest mistakes that night I 
ever made. After I had nearly finished my sermon I said, 
• I want you to take this home with you, and next Sunday 
night we will see what you will do with Him." Well, after 
a while the meeting closed, and we had a second meeting. 
The people gathered in the room, and Mr. Sankey during 
the service sang a hymn, and as he got down to the verse 
" The Saviour calls, for refuge fly,''' I saw I had made a 
mistake in telling the people that next week they could an- 
swer. I saw that it was wrong to put off answering the 
question. After the meeting closed I started to go home. 
They were ringing the fire-alarm at that time, and it proved 
to be the death knell of our city. I didn't know what it 
meant and so went home. That night the fire raged through 
the city, destroying everything in its path, and before the 
next morning the very hall where we had gathered was in 
ashes. People rushed through the streets crazed with fear> 
and some of those who were at the meeting were burned to 
death. Oh ! what a mistake to put off the answer. May 
God forgive me if I should give them a week to decide 
that question. It is not safe to delay ; answer it to-day. 
I seldom come off of this platform but what I hear of some 
one who is sick, and I do not know how far sickness or 
death may be from you. "To-day the Saviour calls; for 
refuge fly." 

The time has come for me to close these Sunday after- 
noon meetings. It is the last time probably that I shall 
ever speak to this congregation. I may never see many of 
you again. It is probably the last time we shall meet 



DEC1S10X. 



409 



until we meet at the judgment bar of God. Shall we meet 
there ? Oh, my friends, come into the fold of Christ to-day. 
If you receive Him it will be well ; if you reject Him and 
are lost it will be terrible. Won't you just say that you 
will receive Christ to-day ? Won't you say you will no 
longer reject Him ? 



MAN'S GREAT FAILURE. 



I want now to call your attention to a clause in that chap- 
ter I have just read, a part of the 2 2d verse : " For there is 
no difference." Now that is one of the verses, one of the por- 
tions of Scripture, that the natural man don't like. I have 
had many a quarrel with men on this verse, because we are 
just apt to think we are a little better than our friends and 
our neighbors, and men don't like to believe there is no 
difference. It is one of the greatest lessons a man has to 
learn — that he is a sinner. If you don't believe that you 
are sick you won't call in a physician. It is just because 
the natural man don't like this text I have taken it to-night. 
I have found out long ago that the lessons we don't like 
are the best medicine for us. I can imagine there is some 
one here who says, "I don't believe that statement, that 
there is no difference." I can imagine there is some one 
here who says, " Isn't it better for a man to be a sober man 
than it is to be a drunkard? Isn't it better for a man to be 
honest than it is for a man to be dishonest ? " Yes, we will 
admit all that : but that don't apply when it comes to the 
great question of salvation. If a man has not been saved 
from his sin, he must perish like the rest of the world. Now 
if a man wants to find out what he is, let him turn to the 3d 
chapter of Romans. He can read his life there. If 
you want to read your own biography, you need not write 

it yourself. Turn to the third chapter of Romans, and it is 
410 



MAN 'S GREA T FAIL URE. 4 x x 

all there, written by a man who knows a good deal more 
about us than we do about ourselves. Christ was the only 
one that ever trod this earth that saw everything in the 
heart of man. We read that He didn't commit himself, be- 
cause He knew their hearts. The heart is deceitful. Who 
can know it ? It is deceitful above all things, and it is des- 
perately wicked. Now, Satan either tries to make men be- 
lieve that they are good enough without salvation, or if he 
can't make them believe that, he tries to tell them that they 
are so bad God won't have anything to do with them. 

The law isn't to save men, but the law is brought in just 
to show man that he is lost and ruined under the law. These 
people that are trying to save themselves by the law are 
making the worst mistakes of their lives. Some people 
say if they try to do right they think that is all that is re- 
quired of them. They say, "I try to keep the law." Well, 
did you ever know a man to keep the law except the Son 
of God himself ? The law was never given to save men by. 
" And what was the law then given for ? " It was given to 
show man his lost and ruined condition. It was given to 
measure men by their fruits. Before God saves a man he 
first stops his mouth. I meet some people in the inquiry 
room who talk a good deal. When I meet those people I 
say to myself, "They are very far from the Kingdom of 
God." A perfect God couldn't give an imperfect standard ; 
a perfect God sees that the law is pure and good; but we 
are not good if we don't come up to the standard. Now if 
a man should come into New York City and advertise that 
he could take a photograph of people's hearts and give a 
perfect likeness, do you think he would get a customer in 
New York ? If we go to have a photograph taken we brush 
ourselves up, and we have it taken sitting, and standing, and 
sitting in this position and sitting in that position, and 
standing in this position and standing in that position, and 
if the artist natters us and makes us look better than we 



412 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



do, we send it around to our friends, and we say, " Yes, 
that is a good likeness." Suppose the artist could get a 
photograph of the heart of the true man, do you think he 
would get many customers ? A good many of you would 
say : " I wouldn't like to have the wife of my bosom see my 
heart. I wouldn't like. to have her read my secret throughts." 
The heart of man is a fountain of corruption, vileness, and 
pollution, and there is no hope for a man being saved until 
he finds out he is bad. 

And so the law is a looking-glass just to show a man 
how foul he is in the sight of God. A little while before 
the Chicago fire I went home one afternoon to my family, 
and I thought I would take them out riding. My little 
boy, about two years old, clapped his hands, wanted to know 
if I wouldn't take him up to Lincoln Park to see the bears. 
I said that I would, and I went out. I hadn't been gone 
a great while when the little fellow wanted his mother to 
wash him up, and then he wanted to go out and play. Well, 
he got playing in the dirt, and he got all covered with dirt, 
and when I drove up he wanted to get into the carriage. 
I said, " No, Willie, you are not ready, I must take you in 
and get you washed." The little fellow said, " O, papa, 
I'se ready." I told him he wasn't ready, he was all over 
dirt. "But papa, mamma washed me; I'se clean." I 
could not make him believe that his face was all dirt. He 
could not believe it : his mamma washed him, and he was 
clean. So I took him up and let the little fellow see him- 
self in the looking-glass in the carriage. He saw the dirt, 
and it stopped his mouth. T held him up to the looking- 
glass so that he saw the dirt, but I did not take the look- 
ing-glass to wash his face with. That is what people do 
The law was not given to save man. It was given to show 
him his lost and ruined condition. It wasn't given to save 
men — the Son of God came to do that work — but the law 
is the schoolmaster that came to show us what to do 



MAN'S GREAT FAILURE. 



413 



when we are saved. Stop all this idle doing, and just come 
to the fountain that has just been opened in the house of 
David for sin and uncleanliness. I can imagine some of 
you may say, " I am sure I am not as some people. I 
am not a publican. I never got drunk in my life. I don't 
like to have Mr. Moody say I am as bad as other people." 
I don't know but pharisaism is as bad as drunkenness, and I 
find you can just sum up the whole human race into about 
two heads — the publican and the pharisee. Yonder is an 
orchard, and in that orchard there are two apple trees — 
miserable, sour, bitter. Stop, one of them is bare ; they are 
worthless. Why are they good for nothing ? Well, one tree 
has got five hundred apples, and the other has got five. 
There is no difference. The fact is the tree is bad. One 
man may have more fruit than another ; but the fruit is 
bad from the old Adam's stock. God didn't look for good 
fruit from Adam's stock. Make the fountain good, and 
the stream will be good. Make men's hearts good, and 
their lives will be good. You might as well tell a man 
to jump over the moon as to be moral, if he hasn't got 
God in his heart. The way to improve the soul of a 
man is to strike at the root of the tree, and if the heart is 
right and in sympathy with God there will be no trouble 
about the life. You need not be cultivating a crab-apple 
tree. That is what some people do. 

Now, in the law it is written that a man that breaks the 
least of the law is guilty of all. Some people say, " I have 
not broken the ten commandments." They seem to think 
that the ten commandments are ten different laws. But a 
man who breaks the least of the commandments has broken 
all, and if you have broken one of the commandments you 
have broken the law of God. Some people think that if 
they only fail in one commandment they are not so 
bad ; but if a man is guilty of breaking one, he breaks 
all. And where can we find one man who does not break 



414 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



more than one commandment ? How many people here 
in New York worship idols ! Measure your heart by the 
law of God, my friends, and you'll find yourself guilty. 
The reason why people sin so much is because they don't 
believe they do sin. Unbelief is the root of all evil. Adam 
sinned through unbelief, and we must get out of the pit at 
the same place he fell in. He fell by unbelief, and we 
must believe to be saved. You go to a prison and you will 
find there a good many criminals ; one is there for one of- 
fense and one for another, but they are all criminals. So 
here to-night, some of us are guilty of one offense and some 
of another, but we are all sinners. 

A few years ago we had a law in our city requiring all 
the policemen to be of a certain height, five feet and ten 
inches, I think it was, and of a good moral character, and 
to be well recommended. One day as I was going down 
the street with a friend, I saw a crowd of men standing in 
front of the Commissioners' office, waiting to be examined. 
Now suppose my friend had gone with me into the Com- 
missioner's office, and we had presented certificates of good 
moral character coming from persons high in place. When 
I came to present my recommendations the Commissioner 
would have said, " Well, Mr. Moody, before we look at 
your papers we will proceed to measure you;" and lo, I 
am found to be but about five feet high ! So I am rejected. 
And my friend might say, " O, well, I am taller than you 
are, so I need have no fear on that score ; " but when they 
come to measure him he is found to be just one-tenth of 
an inch too short, and they throw him out too. My father 
once told me that in England the archers used to shoot at 
a ring, and if any archer failed to shoot all his arrows 
through the ring he was called a sinner. Now suppose I 
should take ten arrows and try to send them through a 
ring at the other side of the building and should only get 
one through, I should be called a sinner. And suppose 



MAN'S GKEA T FAIL URE. 4I 5 

Brother Taylor should take as many arrows ana" send nine 
through, one after the other, and just miss the ring with 
the last one, why he would be a sinner too, just like me. 

My friends, have any of you missed the mark ? 1 see a 
man down there in the audience bow his head. There is 
hope of your being saved if you feel you have sinned. 
And who of us have not failed in many ways ? We are all 
failures, and every man since Adam has been a failure. 
Many persons wish they could have been created perfect 
like Adam ; but there is no man who would not have fallen 
like Adam, if he had been put in Adam's place. Put 
1,000 children into this building, and give them all sorts of 
playthings, but tell them that there is one thing in the 
room that they must not look at ; leave them alone for half 
an hour, and they would all be looking at that one thing. 

Man is a stupendous failure. God on Mount Horeb 
shouted the law to man, and man said, " Oh y yes, Lord, 
we'll keep the law ; we'll not break this Thy command." 
And the very first commandment was, " Thou shall not 
have other gods." Then Moses and Joshua go to have an 
interview with God, and the people whom they had left 
behind at once begin to say, " Make us a god." And the 
golden calf was made and they worshipped it. When Moses 
and Joshua returned from Horeb they heard a great shout. 
Ha ! do you hear that shout ? Is it the shout of victory, of 
those who are rejoicing in conquest? No, it is the shout 
of the idolater. All worshipped the golden calf. It was 
an idolatrous shout that the prophets heard. The worship 
of the golden calf ! You'll find it in New York. One 
man says, Give me more money ; another, Give me a seat 
in Congress ; another, Give me a bottle of rum. Ah, it's 
easy to condemn the Israelites — it is easy to smile, but be- 
ware that you are not guilty of the same sin. Man was a 
failure under the judges, failure under the prophets, and 
now for 2,000 years under grace he has been a most stu- 



4I 6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

pendous failure. Walk the streets and see how quickly he 
goes to ruin. How many are hastening down to the dark 
caves of sin ! Man in his best day, under the most favor- 
able circumstances, is nothing but a failure. 

Imagine Noah stopping work on the Ark, and going on 
a preaching tour. He tells the people of the Flood. He 
warns them of their danger. He exhorts them to repent. 
All are to perish, the wise, the rich, the great — all, all are 
to perish when God comes to judge. They mock at him. 
They tell him, " You'd better go back to your old Ark : do 
you think we will believe that the rich, the priests, the great, 
the powerful, are going to perish as you say ? " They would 
mock, and would not believe. I can hear over the waves, 
that proved the warning true, this one text, " All have 
sinned and come short of the glory of God." Take 
the people of Sodom. Do you believe they would be- 
lieve the warning voice, " No," the}* would say, " Sodom 
to be destroyed ? Nonsense ; it was never more pros- 
perous." They would not believe, and didn't they all 
perish alike ? I tell you there is no difference when God 
comes. It was my sad lot to be in Chicago when that 
great fire swept through the city, and I have often thought 
it was almost a glimpse of the Judgment Day. .Ml were 
on a level then. There was the house of the millionaire 
and near it the house of the poor man. The rich man 
turned his back on his gilded palace, and the poor man 
went with him. There was no difference. We are all on 
one platform ; let no mocking words escape ! Flee for your 
lives ! Flee ! Flee ! There is a mountain we can all escape to 
— it's Calvary. You can escape thus, any night. Some may 
say I paint too dark a picture. For two nights I have 
tried to tell you of the Gospel ; perhaps I have made a 
mistake. Christ kept the law. He was the Lamb, pure 
and spotless. He never broke the law, therefore He can 
die for the sins of man. The law cuts all down as a scythe 



MAN'S GREAT FAILURE. 



W 



cuts down the grass. All go down before its sweep. Right 
here comes in the Gospel — the son of God came to seek 
and to save that which was lost. The grace of God brings 
grace down to men. Substitution ! If you take that out 
of the Bible, you can take the Bible along with you if you 
wish to. The same story runs all through the Book. The 
scarlet thread is unbroken from Genesis to Revelation. 
Christ died for us, that's the end of the law. I always 
loved that Hymn sometimes sung by Brother Sankey, 
" Free from the law. O ! happy condition." He was 
bruised for us, and through Him are we saved. Napoleon 
Bonaparte once sent out a draft. A man was drafted who 
didn't want to go. A friend volunteered to go in his place. 
He went into the army and was killed. A second draft 
was made, and by some accident the same man was drafted 
again, but he said to the officer, " You can't take me, I'm 
dead. I died on such a battle-field." " Why, man, you 
are crazy," said the officer. " You are not dead, here you 
are alive and well before me." " No, Sir," said the man, 
"I am dead. The law has no claim on me ; look at the 
roll." They looked and found another name written 
against his. They insisted ; he carried his case before the 
Emperor, who said that he was right, his friend had died 
for him. Christ died for me. The wages of sin is death* 
Christ has received this payment. It is the height of folly to 
bear this burden, when he can so easily step out from under 
it. 

In Brooklyn, I saw a young man go by without any arms. 
My friend pointed him out, and told me his story. When 
the war broke out he felt it to be his duty to go to the 
front. He was engaged to be married, and while in the 
army letters passed frequently between him and his intend- 
ed wife. After the battle of the Wilderness the young lady 
looked anxiously for the accustomed letter. At last one 
came in a strange hand. She opened it with trembling 

27 



4i8 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



fingers, and read these words : " We have fought a terrible 
battle. I have been wounded so awfully that I shall never 
be able to support you more. A friend writes this for me. I 
love you more tenderly than ever, but I release you from 
your promise. I will not ask you to join your life with the 
maimed life of mine." That letter was never answered. 
The next train that left the young lady was on it. She 
went to his hospital. She found out the number of his 
cot and she went down the aisle, between the long rows 
of wounded men. At last she saw the number ; she threw 
her arms around his neck and said : " I'll not desert you. 
I'll take care of you." He did not resist her love. They 
were married, and there is no happier couple than this one. 
You're dependent on one another. Christ says : " I'll 
take care of you. I'll take you to this bosom of mine." 
That young man could have spurned her love ; he could, 
but he didn't. Surely you can be saved if you will accept 
salvation of Him. Oh, that the grace of God may reach 
your heart to-night, by which you may be brought out from 
under the curse of the law. 



TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD. 



There are times in meetings when I feel like bowing 
my head and praying. It seems as if we had preaching 
enough — for ten weeks, day after day, night after night. 
I am sure I don't know how to present Christ in any other 
light than I have. I've tried to tell you of His wonderful 
grace, and how full of love He is ; and now, after I have 
read a few verses of Scripture, I shall call on some of our 
friends to tell you the way of life, in hopes that you may 
get it from other lips if not from mine. Every soul here 
to-night may be saved if he will only take God at His word. 
Let me read from the 13th chapter of Acts, 39th verse. I 
do not know of any verse in the whole Bible that puts the 
way of life in clearer light than that 39th verse : " By 
Him all that believe are justified from all things from which 
he could not be justified by the law of Moses." So it is 
just simply to believe. You say, What am I to believe ? 
You are to believe God's Word ; you are to take God at 
His word and trust Him for salvation. If you trust Him 
to keep you, He will keep you. He will save you the mo- 
ment you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of 
trying to trust Him, instead of trying to save ourselves, 
just drop the word try and put the word " trust " in. He 
will justify us in all things by just simply believing on Him. 
I do not know any word that the inquirers stumble over 
more than they do on that word believe. It is not any 



42 o GLAD TIDINGS. 

miraculous kind of belief. Some people are waiting for 
some belief to come down out of Heaven. In their hearts 
they do not believe they can have the same kind of faith 
in Him that they have in one another. It is not any mir- 
aculous faith or belief we want. It is to put our trust in 
God, and say with Job, " Though He slay me yet will I 
trust in Him." " I will cast myself on the mercy of God." 
I never knew any one in my life but that got salvation who 
did that; and the very moment you do it you get salva- 
tion. Paul says, in the fourth chapter of Romans, fifth 
verse, " But to him that worketh not, butbelieveth." The 
very thing that keeps hundreds of people away from Christ 
is that they are trying to work their way to salvation. The 
moment you try to work for a gift it ceases to be a gift. If 
you pay even a farthing for it, it ceases to be a gift. ' Some 
man says he is not worthy of it, that his life has been so 
bad. What does grace mean ? It means undeserved fa- 
vor. It is because we do not deserve it and cannot deserve 
it that God gives it to us. If a man is not going to be sav- 
ed until he is worthy, he will never be saved. A man 
prayed in a prayer-meeting in Philadelphia the other day 
a prayer that made the cold chills run all over me. He 
prayed to be blessed as far as he was worthy. We ask not 
because we are worthy ; we live in rebellion against God 
day after day ; we have been in rebellion for years. If you 
will let rebellion cease and be willing to let the Lord save 
you He will do it. A young convert told us a week ago 
how he was saved. It was one of the sweetest conversions 
I ever heard of. I noticed him a number of times in the 
inquiry room, and talked with him some, but I never had 
thought he was very deeply awakened. He said he was 
walking down Broadway one day, and just right in the 
street in one moment he was saved, by the thought that he 
would just give himself up and trust to God to save him. 
It is often said to me, " You see I do not just understan 



' 



TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD. 421 

what it is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." Take that 
verse, " He came unto His own, but His own received Him 
not ; but as many as received Him to them gave He power 
to become the daughters and sons of God." The differ- 
ence between a saved and an unsaved man is that one has 
received Christ, and the other has not. Christ is the life. 
There is all the difference in the world between a man who 
receives Christ and a man who rejects Him. Christ is God's 
gift. If you receive Him you are saved • if not, you per- 
ish. The question is whether you are willing to receive 
the Lord Jesus Christ. I know of a person who, in the 
city where she lived, at one time could not have gone out 
and bought $25 worth of goods on credit in all the shops 
together; they would not trust her. The next day she 
could have bought $1,000 worth. The difference is that 
she was a poor shop girl, and she married a wealthy man. 
She had received him, and that gave her power. A person 
that receives Christ has the power. A man may be a poor, 
blind, wretched beggar ; the next day he may have receiv- 
ed all the treasures of hope ; he may have espoused the 
Lord God. " For as many as received Him to them He 
gave everlasting life, and privilege to become the sons of 
God." If every verse but one were to be blotted out of 
the Bible, and we could choose but one, I would decide in 
one moment without hesitation. I would say, give me John v. 
24 : " Verily " — which means truly, or " Mind what I tell 
you." Whenever you see "Verily, verily," in Scripture, 
put your name right in there. I put my name there ; there 
it is, D. L. Moody — " I say unto you, He that heareth my 
word " — I have heard it. Nothing can make me believe I 
have not heard it — " He that heareth my word and believ- 
eth on Him that sent me " — I just as much believe that 
God sent Christ into the world, to be the Saviour of the 
world, as I believe that I exist. I could not doubt it. We 
have evidence enough ; we do not want any more. Men 



422 GLAD TIDINGS. 

here in New York that have been gamblers and thieves, 
the worst men there are, have been saved, who have heard 
His word. Some of you say they won't hold out. I know 
some converts of that class in Chicago who were saved ten 
years ago, who hold out faithfully yet. I know they said I 
would not hold out twenty-one years ago, but God has kept 
me so far, and I think He will continue to do so. " He 
that heareth my word andbelieveth on Him that sent me " — 
I said to those inquirers, " Have you got it that far ? Do 
you believe every word of it so far ? " " Yes." Well now 
the next word — " hath, h-a-t-h, hath — everlasting life." One 
man said there, " Oh I understand that. That is very plain." 
It does not say you shall have it when you come to die. It 
does not say "for six months, or as long as you live," but 
" everlasting." God says you hath it. The next word is, 
" And shall not come into condemnation " — that means in- 
to judgment — "but has passed from death unto life." Paul 
says, " Give a reason for the faith which is within you." 
If I were called upon to give a reason, I would say my rea- 
son is John v. 24. I took my stand on that rock twenty 
years ago, and I stand upon it yet. As the Irishman said, 
" I tremble sometimes, but the rock never has." God's 
Word does not fail. If you build your hopes of Heaven 
on God's Word, you will be saved. Why not take that 
verse home to you, and take salvation with it ? Eternal life 
is hidden in that short verse. It is there, if you will but 
reach out your hand and take it. To-night God offers 
Christ to you. He will receive you to-night if you will take 
Him at His word, and make room for Christ in your heart 
to-night. 

A building in Dublin caught fire some time ago, and in 
it was a person exposed to death. The flames had already 
enveloped the staircase, but the firemen took ladders and 
spliced them and put the long ladder up, and the only 
hope for that person was to get out on the ladder, but they 



TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD. 



423 



found it was not quite long enough, and this person per- 
ished in the flames. Thank God, the ladder is long 
enough to-night. The fire-escape comes up to the very 
window where you are. The question is, Will you trust the 
fire-escape — will you trust Christ to-night? The other 
Sunday, when I was speaking on " Trust," a person came 
to me the next day and said, " I want to tell you how I 
was saved. You remember you told about that lady who 
sought Christ three years and could not find Him, and 
when you told that, it was I. I was in that same condition 
and through your story I got light." I don't think I have 
ever told it but what somebody got light and life. I will 
tell it again, for I would go up and down the world telling 
it if I could get a convert. One night I was preaching, 
and happening to cast my eyes down during the sermon, I 
saw two eyes just riveted upon me. Every word that fell 
from my lips she just seemed to catch at with her own lips, 
and I was very anxious to go down to where she was. 
After the sermon I went to the pew and said, " My friend, 
are you a Christian ? " " Oh, no," said she, " I wish I 
was. I have been seeking Christ three years and cannot 
find Him." Said I, " Oh, there is a great mistake about 
that" Says she, "Do you think I am not in earnest ? Do 
you think, sir, I have not been seeking Christ? " Said I, "I 
suppose you think you have, but Christ has been seeking 
you these twenty years, and it would not take an anxious 
sinner and an anxious Saviour three years to meet, and if 
you had been really seeking Him you would have found 
Him long before this." " What would you do, then ? " 
Said I, " Do nothing, only believe on the Lord Jesus Christ 
and thou shalt be saved." " Oh," said she, " I have heard 
that till my head swims. Everybody says, Believe ! believe ! 
believe ! and I am none the wiser. I don't know what you 
mean by it." " Very well," said I, " I will drop the word ; 
but just trust the Lord Jesus Christ to save. " If I say I 



424 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



trust Him, will He save me ? " " No, you must do a thou- 
sand things ; but if you really trust Him He will save you." 
" Well," said she, " I trust Him, but I don't feel any differ- 
ent." " Ah," said I, '" I have found your difficulty. You 
have been hunting for feeling all these three years. You 
have not been looking for Christ." Says she, " Christians 
tell how much joy they have got." " But," said I, " you 
want Christian experience before you get one. Instead of 
trusting God, you are looking for Christian experience." 
Then I said : " Right here in this pew, just commit your- 
self to the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust Him, and you will 
be saved," and I held her right to that word " trust," which 
is the same as the word " believe " in the Old Testament. 
" You know what it is to trust a friend. Cannot you trust 
God as a friend ? " She looked at me for five minutes, it 
seemed, and then said slowly : " Mr. Moody, I trust the 
Lord Jesus Christ this night to save my soul." Turning to 
the pastor of the church she took him by the hand and re- 
peated the declaration. Turning to an elder in the church 
she said again the solemn words, and near the door, meet- 
ing another officer of the church, she repeated for the 
fourth time, " I am trusting Jesus," and went off home. 
The next night when I was preaching I saw her right in 
front of me, " Eternity " written in her eyes, her face light- 
ed up, and when I asked inquirers to go into the other 
room, she was the first to go in. I wondered at it, for I 
could see by her face that she was in the joy of her Lord. 
But when I got in I found her with her arms around a 
young lady's neck, and I heard her say, " It is only just 
trusting. I stumbled over it three years and found it all in 
trusting ; " and the three weeks I was there she led more 
souls to Christ than anybody there. If I got a difficult 
case I would send it to her. Oh, my friends, to-night 
won't you trust Him ? Let us put our trust in Him. Let 
us commit everything to Him. Who will trust Him to- 



TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD. 425 

night? Who will commit themselves to Him to-night? 
Who will do it this last night we. are to preach the Gospel ? 
Who will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved ? I 
must confess that I hate to close this meeting. They have 
been ten very sweet weeks to me ; ten precious weeks • 
but there is one sad thought about it all, that there are a 
few who have been here every night and have missed 
hardly a night. I have looked for their coming. I have 
watched them, I have gone to their houses — some of them 
— and talked with them. I have not had time to go to 
many. I have gone down into the congregations and 
spoken to them, and they have just wavered and halted, 
and it seems as if I could not have these meetings close 
and leave them out. It seems like a visitation of God, 
and if these will not accept Him now I fear they never 
will. May every man and woman in this assemblage trust 
the Lord. 



THE RESURRECTION. 



My subject this morning is Christ's Resurrection. It 
is one of the chief corner stones of our religion. The 
Apostles preached the resurrection, as much as they 
preached the death, of Christ. In all their sermons, it is 
the key note. The door hangs on two hinges, the death 
and the resurrection. 

The resurrection is spoken of forty-two times in the 

New Testament. Christ himself refers to His own death 

and resurrection. In the 16th chapter of Matthew. 21st 

verse, it says, " From that time forth began Jesus to show 

unto His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem, 

and suffer many things of the Chief Rulers and Scribes, and 

be killed, and be raised again the third day." Then in 

the 17th chapter and 9th verse, after they had come down 

from the Mount of Transfiguration, — " And as they came 

down from the mountain Jesus charged them, saying, 

1 Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen 

again from the dead.' " Then in the 9th chapter of Mark, 

31st verse, — "For He taught His disciples and said unto 

them ' The Son of Man is delivered into the hands of men, 

and they shall kill Him ; and after that He is killed, He 

shall rise the third day." Christ taught the resurrection 

Himself, and told them plainly that on the third day he 

should rise again. When the Pharisees came and wanted 

a sign thereof, He told them they should have no other 
426 



THE RESURRECTION. 



427 



sign than that of Jonah. What was that ? A Welch 
preacher once called my attention to it ; he said that was 
the sign of resurrection. Undoubtedly when the Captain 
of that boat got ashore, he reported the wonderful thing 
that had taken place, how this man got overboard, and how 
he had been seen to be swallowed by the fish. Undoubt- 
edly the news reached Nineveh, how this man had refused 
to take the Lord's message, how he had been swallowed 
up by the whale, and how he had afterwards appeared in 
the streets. That is the very sign that Christ said they 
should have. It seems to me to be evidence enough ; we 
want no more proof. I could give you verse after verse 
that is full of that doctrine of the resurrection, but that is 
enough. There was not an othodox person in the days of 
Christ, but that believed in the resurrection ; and yet there is 
not one-hundredth part as much said in the Old Testament 
about it, as there is in the New. 

The Pharisees believed there was a resurrection. There 
are a great many Sadducees in New York to-day, hundreds 
of men here who do not know that Christ is risen ; they 
have heard it, but they do not believe it. When they 
hereafter ask for the news, tell them Christ has risen ; they 
will be surprised. 

What if Christ had remained in the sepulchre where 
they left Him ? Earth and hell did all they could to keep 
Him there. Undoubtedly all the dark and fallen angels 
of Satan hovered over it and strove to keep it in their pos- 
session ; but the moment that angel came down from the 
world of light, the fiends vanished. One angel from God's 
world above could easily take care of a hundred thousand 
men. How were those guards who had been placed there 
going to keep Him in, after He had accomplished His 
work ? He had gone down there and conquered the 
powers of death and darkness ; and instead of their taking 
Him into the grave, it was love for you and me that went 



428 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



down into the sepulchre. He went down there to con- 
quer death for us. We ought all to turn Methodists this 
morning, and shout Hallelujah, from the depths of our 
hearts. The Lord has risen ! He has burst open the bars 
of the tomb ; He has come forth from the grave ! 

What a wonderful scene, on that Easter morning, that 
eternal blessed morning when the hopes of the Church had 
been dashed to the ground ! If you had asked any one in 
Jerusalem that morning before the sun came up, what was 
the hope of Christianity as proclaimed by Christ, they would 
have to]d you, " It is utterly gone, there is not one ray." 
All the chief men were against it, and of His disciples, one 
had betrayed Him, sold Him, and if he had any disciples 
they were hid away, they dared not own Him, they dared 
not come out ; they were moral cowards. But wait a little 
while ; wait until you hear the news, the best, most glorious 
news that ever came to the Church of God : He had 
risen ; He had conquered death and overcome it ! I see 
those hands folded across His breast ; they lie cold in 
death. But suddenly they begin to grow warm, and soon 
He leaps up out of the sepulchre ! They had rolled away 
the great stone which was the door, and which they had 
set there for a seal. It was death to any man to break the 
Roman seal ; but what was that seal to Him who had con- 
quered death ? An angel far swifter than the morning 
light, came down and rolled away that stone, and the earth 
quaked and the men who beheld it trembled, and they fell 
as dead men. They could not arrest the angel of light 
that opened the door ; and the Conqueror had fled. 

Just about daylight two or three women are coming 
along toward the sepulchre ; they are saying " Who will roll 
away the stone ? " Mary Magdalene was one. They had 
marked the place well where He was laid, so they might 
not miss it the next Easter morning. They were coming 
back to anoint His body. They were bringing with them 



THE RESURRECTION. 



429 



the sweet spices ; I suppose they had not slept any that 
night, but had been all night long preparing them. While 
they were talking of who should roll away the stone for 
them, lo, and behold ! the stone was rolled away ! Now 
they do not wait long to tell the news, but flee back into 
the city, to tell Peter and John that some one had been 
there and taken away the Lord, they knew not where ! 

Peter and John then came in great haste. John out- 
runs Peter. These men whose hearts are sad and heavy, as 
Peter's was, cannot run as though their hearts were leaping 
within them for joy. Then they hasten back again to pro- 
claim the glorious news of the resurrection, that Christ was 
among the living and not among the dead. Undoubtedly 
they could scarcely believe it, — it was too good to be true ; 
and Mary Magdalene could not bear the thought of leaving 
that place, even though the angels had proclamed that He 
had risen, and even though Christ had said that He would 
rise. 

At last as she was still sitting there weeping alone, one 
came up whom she supposed to be the gardener, and asked 
her why she was weeping ? She said " They have taken 
away my Lord. Tell me where have they put Him, that I 
may take care of His body." She thought, perhaps they 
thought He was unworthy to lie in Joseph's tomb, and 
that they had therefore cast Him out, and she wanted the 
body to take it away. At last the man, who was Christ, 
spoke to her again and she knew that familiar voice and 
fell at His feet. The blessed news was brought first to 
that woman, which after 1900 years have rolled away is 
still the most blessed news of all. 

Then before they came to the city, Christ showed Him- 
self to them again, saying " All hail! " The next time he 
appeared it was to Simon Peter ; for Paul tells us that 
Simon Peter had an interview with Him, and Luke tells us 
that Christ and Peter met. The first appearance was on 



43 o GLAD TIDINGS. 

Easter Sabbath. On the next Saturday two of the disciples 
went to Emmaus, about eight miles away. As they walked 
along, they were discussing the good news, and they could 
scarcely believe it- Just then a stranger came along and 
kept step with them. I suppose they thought he was 
rather rude at first. He asked them " What are these com- 
munications that you have had ? " " Why, art thou a 
stranger in Israel? Hast thou not heard?" "What 
news ? " " Have you not heard of the great Prophet, Jesus 
of Nazareth ? Him they have killed — crucified, and how our 
hopes are dashed to the ground ? There is a rumor in 
Jerusalem that He is risen, but we cannot believe it. It 
would be too good." Then He upbraided them for their 
unbelief. 

I don't believe any two men ever heard the word so 
eloquently expounded. He expounded the Gospel to 
them, beginning with Moses, and so on through with all 
the prophets. He told them how Christ ought to have 
suffered, and ought to have died, and that so the prophecy 
would be fulfilled. He said these things as they walked 
along, and finally they reached their destination. They 
started to go into the house, and He was passing along, — 
He would not offer to go in without an invitation ; but 
they had liked his company in their walk so well, that they 
were constrained to ask him in. They said " It is late in 
the day ; come and break bread with us ; " and they con- 
strained Him, and He went in. A plain feast was then 
prepared, and the three men sat down to the table. The 
moment He lifted up His eyes, lo, and behold ! they knew 
Him. Their eyes were opened and they beheld their risen 
Saviour ! I do not suppose they ate any that night, al- 
though they had walked eight miles ; but they could not 
have been wearied because Christ was with them. 

When the night was partly on, they started back to the 
city to tell the good news. They found the apostles 



THE RESURRECTION. 



43 1 



gathered together, and that very night they told them what 
had happened, — how they were going along and their risen 
Saviour joined them ; and they tried to make the apostles 
believe that He had talked with them. But they thought 
it was a vision, and their imagination. While they were 
doubting, that very night, — I do not know what time it 
was ; it might have been after midnight, when the windows 
were all fastened and the door was locked, and ten of the 
apostles were there. Thomas was missing that night. My 
friends, be careful not to be missing and absent from the 
prayer meetings ; the Lord may come at any hour. While 
they were talking, probably, about the resurrection, lo, and 
behold ! He appeared ! No doors had been opened ; no 
windows unfastened. He said, " It is I, myself : handle 
me and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see 
me have." And he asked them " Have ye here anything 
to eat ? " and they brought forth fish and honey, and He 
ate with them. He told them " I am not a spirit, touch me ; 
here I am." And they doubt no more. These ten men 
believed, and they sent and told Thomas that the Lord had 
risen and had appeared to Peter and Mary Magdalene, 
that these men had seen Him. Thomas, when he came to 
speak with them, said he did not believe it. There are a 
lot of Thomases alive now, — hundreds of men who do not 
believe that Christ has risen, and they are worshiping a 
dead Saviour. No man can serve God in spirit and in truth 
until he knows that Christ is risen. We must see Christ 
at the right hand of God, beside the throne, before we can ^ 
truly worship Him, and not in the grave. The apostles 
tried to make Thomas believe that Christ was risen, and 
that they had seen Him and talked with Him ; but Thomas 
said " I will not believe unless I see Him with my own 
eyes, unless I put my finger into the wounds on His hands 
and in His side." A week wore away, and the next Sab- 
bath morning dawned. 



432 GLAD TIDINGS. 

During that interval, the eleven were together, and 
Thomas was one of them ; and who should meet them again 
but the Lord of Glory ! He said to Thomas " Reach 
hither thy hand and put thy finger into the wounds in my 
side and in my hands." But Thomas did not care to do it 
then. He saw Him and heard His voice and doubted no 
longer, and he cried " My Lord, my God ! " 

I have spoken of six appearances. The seventh was, 
one day when Peter said to the rest, " I will go fishing." 
They were poor men, and were not very popular, and no 
rich people or friends feasted them and asked them to 
dine. So they started and set sail one night. The night 
was the best time to catch fish in that country. They 
toiled all night and caught nothing. The next morning 
early they saw a stranger walking along the shore. He called 
and asked them if they had caught anything. They said 
they had not. He then told them to cast their net on the 
other side, the right side. They did so ; and immediately 
the net was full. Then some one whispered " It is the 
Lord ! " Peter, seeing it to be Jesus, leaped into the water 
and went swimming out to shore. Then they pulled the 
net in, but it broke the first time. Then they put it in 
again and though it was full, yet it came in unbroken 
That is typical of the resurrection. We will get all the fish 
in at last ! We will make a big haul then ! So when they 
came on shore they dined together, and Jesus ate with 
them. Afterwards, He met His disciples again on a moun- 
tain in Galilee ; and there He told them to go into the 
world and teach all nations, and preach the gospel, in His 
name. The ninth time He appeared was to James. Paul 
tells us in Corinthians, 18th chapter, that He and James 
met. 

The tenth time was the last time He appeared to them. 
He took them out of the city, perhaps out at the same gate 
out of which they passed on the memorable night when 



THE RESURRECTION. 



433 



they went into Gethsemane. He went up Mount Olivet, 
and paused, perhaps, under the same Olive trees, and met 
that little band for the last time, that little company that 
was bound to shake the world. What a solemn meeting 
that must have been ! We talk of the solemnity of our 
last meetings with our friends, but it cannot be compared 
to this one ; as He raised His pierced and wounded hands 
over them and began to bless them. While He was bles- 
sing them, His voice grew a little fainter, and fainter, and 
He began to ascend into the air, and their vision grew less 
and less distinct, until at last He disappeared in the clouds, 
out of their sight. I can imagine how just up there in the 
clouds there waited a Chariot from Heaven to take Him 
home. His work on earth was finished, and He went 
sweeping through space towards Heaven. He could see 
the apostles where He had left them, and see the tears 
trickling over the cheeks of John and Peter, as He went 
sweeping on through the air towards the throne. Then the 
disciples went off and prayed alone for several days as He 
had told them. They prayed for the Holy Ghost to fall 
upon them ; and at the end of ten days, it came, and then 
they went forth and said, " We have seen Christ Jesus." 

The next testimony was Stephen's, when he was filled 
with the Holy Ghost. When Stephen was stoned in 
martyrdom, the clouds rolled away, and he saw Him at the 
right-hand of God ; and he there proclaimed that he saw 
Jesus standing at the right hand of God. When Christ 
saw poor Stephen, the first martyr that was to die, after 
Him, — when He saw him fighting alone, single handed, 
Christ stood up and gave him a warm welcome to heaven. 

Paul tells us that he saw Him the last one of all those 
that saw Christ, and Christ spoke with him on the way to 
Damascus. All through Paul's writings, he constantly 
brought out the blessed glorious truths of the resurrection. 
In the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians (we ought to be 

28 



434 GLAD TIDINGS. 

familiar with that) Paul goes on to prove that we shall be 
raised, incorruptible. " That which is mortal shall put on 
immortality." It was a glorious morning when the light 
shone into that mighty sepulchre. Thousands of Jews be- 
lieved in Christ having risen that morning. Pilate wrote 
to the Roman Emperor, " Jesus has been raised from the 
dead." Do you think Peter and James and John would 
have dared to preach there in Jerusalem that Christ had 
risen, if He had not risen ? Do you think they would have 
dared to proclaim it on the day of Pentecost to those Jews ? 
If you take the doctrine of the resurrection out of the 
Bible, how dark life would be ! As you come to lay your 
dead in the grave, what hope could you have of their living 
again ? Paul says " If Christ had not risen, our preaching 
is in vain." But thanks be to God, He has risen ; and He 
is now at the right hand of God, and is coming again. 
The night of jubilee is fast wearing on. 

I believe that the just, — those that die triumphant in 
Christ now, — will rise before the throne of judgment, to 
have part in the first resurrection. I believe that He is 
getting His guest cham.ber ready, and the moment it is 
ready those clouds between us and Him will roll away, and 
He will come back to us again. For it says that the Lord 
from heaven shall descend with a shout. Yes, of we that 
are living, some may never taste death. Christ may come 
before we die ! These bodies may be translated as Enoch 
and Elijah were. Precious thought ! And He is going to 
bring our friends with Him. 

People often ask me " Shall we know our friends when 
He comes ? " One thing proves it : Will you want to 
know them ? Yes ! Then you will ; for you are to be 
satisfied. The solemn thought comes stealing over me 
that the next Sabbath morning that we meet will be the 
morning of that resurrection. Even if we should come 
back here next year, you wont all be here. We shall never 



THE RESURRECTION. 435 

all meet together another morning until we meet on that 
morning when Christ summons His own, and we shall meet 
to dwell forever with the Lord. 

O, my friends, the way from the foot of the cross is 
clear, right straight to the throne, and there is nothing to 
hinder. Paul says, " Jacob will leave his ailments in the 
grave." This flesh is heir to many ailments, — but thanks 
be to God, when the trumpet shall sound and we shall 
come forth from the grave, we will leave all those 
things and come up glorified bodies, without any pains and 
aches, with nothing to mar our happiness. Glorious morn- 
ing ! It will soon be upon us ! A few more mornings, at 
the farthest, and we shall be on Canaan's shore. A few 
fleeting hours ! Won't it be a glorious morning ? In a 
few short months or years, our conflict will be over, our 
warfare will be ended, and we shall be forever with the 
Lord. Let us to-day ask ourselves the question " Have I 
got an interest in Christ ? Have I got hope in Him ? 
Have I an interest in the kingdom to come ? Is my name 
written in the Lamb's Book of Life ? " The guest-chamber 
will be all ready for us. 

I have travelled a good deal you know. Well, when 
I come to stay at a friend's house, I am shown to my room, 
and I look around it and see that my friends have antici- 
pated every wish, and every comfort. There is the fresh 
water, the clean towels, and there may be a boquet of 
flowers. Perhaps the host will come in and ask me to 
look around and see if there is anything I need, or wish 
for ; and I look around and see that there is not a thing 
that I can want, that is not already supplied. When Christ 
brings us into His guest-chamber there wont be anything 
wanting. Everything we will want, we will have. May 
God help us set our face like a flint, so that we may have 
part in the first resurrection ! 

Some people say. " I don't know how the dead are 



436 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



going to be raised." In London, especially, they often 
asked the question, because there they dig one grave very 
deep, and put one member of the family into it, one after 
another, one on top of the other, eight or ten deep. They 
say, " If those who died in Christ are going to be raised 
first, how is He going to raise up believers from the midst 
of such a grave ? " Well, if you take a lot of sawdust and 
put bits of steel in with it, and then take a strong magnet 
and draw it over the sawdust, every particle of steel will 
come to the top. So, when the great magnet of God's 
trumpet call shall pass over these graves at the resurrection 
day, those who have loved and followed Him will hear and 
spring to His call. Those who have not loved Him will 
not even wish or think to answer it ; they will lie as the 
sawdust lies under the steel magnet. They would rather 
flee away from Him. O, let us live so close to Him, that 
when that morning shall come, it shall be a blissful 
morning ! 



ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN WORKERS. 



You remember the first week we were here, we were 
talking about works. We are about ready to go away, and 
we want to bring that subject before you again — the subject 
of works. Of course, I am talking now to those who think 
they have been saved. Those who have been here some of 
the time during the past ten weeks understand that I do 
not wish to try to stir up men to work for God until they 
are first saved, until they have first accepted salvation 
as a gift. A man cannot work his way into heaven. A 
man cannot do anything to please God even, until he has 
first believed in Christ, and accepted salvation through 
Him. Let me read from the second chapter of Galatians, 
1 6th verse ; " Knowing that a man is not justified by the 
works of the law but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we 
have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified 
by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law, for 
by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Then 
that verse in the 4th of Romans : " Now to him that work- 
eth is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt." But 
after we are saved we cannot help going to work. If a man 
tells me he has been saved of Christ, and yet has no de- 
sire to work for God, I know it is a spurious conversion ; 
it is not a true salvation ; it has not got the ring of heaven 
in it. The first words that fell from the lips of Christ on 
earth were, " For wist ye not that I must be about my 

Father's business?" You will find, too, that during His 

437 



438 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ministry He toiled early and late in the work. A man may 
say he has faith, but if he has not works he has only a dead 
faith. You cannot have faith without works ; you cannot 
have fire without heat. Do- not let these men that are not 
willing to lift their little fingers to help God's cause — do 
not let them think they are going to heaven only because 
they have a pew in church, and criticize the minister, and 
if a minister touches their conscience in any guilty spot they 
want to get a new one— that minister does not suit them ! 
Those men are deceiving themselves. If a man has not 
got a spirit of work, he has not got the spirit of Christ or 
righteousness. The mind of a man that has been born of 
God is not in that man. 

In the 1 6th chapter of John it says, " I am the vine, ye 
are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him, 
the same bringeth forth much fruit; For without me ye 
can do nothing." There are one or two things in this chap- 
ter I would call your attention to. It says, " fruit," " more 
fruit," and " much fruit" — three kinds ; there is another, 
" no fruit." I believe there is a good deal of pruning that 
would not have to be done to us if we abided in Christ. 
" He that abideth in Christ bringeth forth much fruit." 
But we fall off and are fickle and need pruning, so then the 
knife must be put in. This time of the year the gardener 
is clipping his fruit trees if he wants them to bear. So God 
has to prune us. Instead of our murmuring and complain- 
ing about it, we ought to go to work to put forth more and 
more fruit. How many have lost their children and after- 
wards have gone to work earnestly for the first time for the 
Lord ! Before they lost their children, they worked and 
lived wholly for them, spending all their time to accumulate 
money for them. God took their children to Him for their 
own sake as well as for their parents' sake — to lift them 
higher. No one who has read the Scripture will say that 
it does not teach us to work. 



ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN WORKERS. 439 

Every Bible student loves to work. The Word of God 
inspires us to work. Paul said the love of Christ constrain- 
ed him. Jeremiah said the Word of God burned in his 
bones. He fed upon it and it was sweet to his taste. If 
a man gets his heart full of the Word of God, he is not 
then interested just in one little corner of the vineyard, but 
he will take a wide field of labor and interest. He will 
rejoice to hear of a conversion, in any and every part of 
the world. He will be glad to 'hear of God's work among 
all denominations of Christians, among Baptists, among 
Methodists, among Presbyterians. The moment he hears 
the Word of God taught, he comes out of the sectarian 
world, and is interested to have the cause of God advanced 
in all parts of the world. His interest is not confined to 
the prosperity of his own little sect, but it goes out toward 
every good work. 

A man was taken sick, and while he lay there, some 
one sent him a bunch of flowers. He said if he had known 
how much good it would do to a sick man, he would have 
sent some when he was well. A great many do not know 
how much good they can do until they have been tried, 
and have been tried to their sorrow. If we will look around 
us day after day we will find many a good thing to do. 
We ought to pray every day that we may wipe away the 
tears of suffering from some one's face that very day. If 
we are going to help the poor widow and those fatherless 
children, we must do it now. God has sent us here to 
make the world brighter and better, and to help those that 
carry burdens. Some one said the world seemed like two 
mountains, a mountain of joy and a mountain of sorrow, 
and if every day we can take a little from the mountain of sor- 
row to the mountain of joy we might be better and do better. 
" He that waters, himself shall be watered." Every one 
of us should study how we can be a blessing to others. 
These people who are going round with your hearts sad and 



44 o GLAD TIDINGS. 



cast down, if you go to work and try to help others, the 
your burdens will be gone and the light will shine in your 
souls. 

In the 2d chapter of Titus, 14th verse, it says ; " Who 
gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all ini- 
quity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of 
all good works." I think we do not like to be considered 
peculiar. We are very much afraid of that. We want to 
be like the world, and mingle with the world, and try to 
be like the world, so that people won't consider us pecu- 
liar. People do not like that. I hear people say some- 
times, " Yes she is a good woman, but " — with a shrug or 
a grimace — "she is very peculiar." "Yes, a very good 
man — yes, oh yes, but very peculiar." I would just like 
to make one journey round the world to see if I could not 
find one church made up of peculiar people. That church 
would shake the whole world. That is what we want — 
peculiarity. Christ taught us that He will make us a pe- 
culiar people, zealous of all good works. The very thing 
we do not like is the very thing we want to-day. Elijah 
was the most peculiar man of his day, but he was worth 
more than all those one hundred thousand people around 
him. He held the keys of Heaven. He could stand be- 
fore Ahab and his whole court, and all his false prophets. 
God was with him. Enoch was the most peculiar man that 
lived in his day. I suppose they all pointed to him and said, 
u Yes, yes, a good man, but very peculiar — different from 
other people." Daniel was the most peculiar man Baby- 
lon ever had. If we could only have a few peculiar people 
now in New York we would see wonderful results. If God 
has a great work to do, He will call some peculiar man to 
do it. A man that sets his back upon the world, and sets 
his face like a flint toward Heaven, is a man that is pecu- 
liar, and God can use him and speak through him. 

The great trouble is with many that we don't get our- 



: 

or 



ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN WORKERS. 44I 

selves out of sight. We want to let the name of Christ be 
kept in sight, and let us work for Him, and then we are 
ready to work for the Lord in any position. Now turn to 
Titus, iii. 8 : " This is a faithful saying, and these things I 
will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have be- 
lieved in God might be careful to maintain good works. 
These things are good and profitable unto men." Now, if 
I understand that portion of Scripture, it means that you 
are to be a help to every good work, every good society. 
Don't say, " O God, bless my little field." Is the Tract So- 
ciety a good society? I believe that it is. Let us do all 
we can to keep it up, and I hope the time is coming, and I 
hope I will live to see the day, and I believe I will, when 
these wealthy men will be seeking investments for the Lord 
as they do for themselves. It will do perhaps for these 
ungodly men to accumulate these millions, but when a man 
has been redeemed by the precious blood of the Lamb and 
is jealous of good work I think he ought to be seeking 
some investments for the Lord. Is this society a good so- 
ciety ? Then maintain it. Keep it up. Look at the socie- 
ties you have got in New York, that are just bleeding at 
every pore, suffering for the want of money ; look at the 
churches saddled with debt. Many men are not willing to 
get into debt themselves, but they will let the Lord's 
work suffer. Now, if you want a- good appetite and if 
you want to sleep well, if you have got money, I will tell 
you what to do. Send around a check to the American 
Bible Society for $10,000; send one to the Tract Society 
for $10,000 • send around Dr. Tyng to pay off the church 
debt. See how his eyes brighten up when I say that. 
Here are some of these Presbyterian churches in the same 
fix. They would be very glad to have the debt on these 
churches paid off. They cannot work much for the Lord 
when they are in debt. Then there is the Young Woman's 
Christian Association ; they, too, have got a debt and want 



442 GLAD TIDINGS. 

to work. Look at their field — these hundreds and thou- 
sands of women in New York City that will be led astray 
perhaps, and it will not be long before their feet will take 
hold on hell. It is worth more than all your preaching if 
you can only have an institution to throw out a warm hand 
and a beneficent influence. You, ladies of wealth and 
position, say, " I don't see the importance of these things." 
Of course you don't. You have got a good mother and fa- 
ther to care for and watch over you, but look at the hun- 
dreds and thousands of girls that have got no father or 
mother, and who have no wealth and are poor, and have to 
struggle against odds that you know nothing about. They 
ought to be helped, and the strong must help the weak, and 
if you have got money go and make good use of it. Go 
and be a sunbeam to cheer up somebody else, and by so 
doing get a blessing in your own soul. Says Paul : " Be 
careful that you maintain good work." Instead of cutting 
down these missionaries in a foreign land, I think it would 
be better for us to cut off some of our own luxury. When 
a man can drive out with a four-in-hand, let him give up two 
of his horses, and give what he saves by it to the foreign 
mission field, and so with many little luxuries ; then we can 
enjoy Christianity a great deal better. 

These hard times are the very best thing that could 
happen to the church. I don't believe we would have had 
such a blessing in New York if it had not been for these 
hard times. When men get their millions and hoard them 
up, I think it is the very best thing that can happen to them 
to have the Lord come and take them away, and if a man 
maintains these goo4 works with his money he will never 
lose it, but lay it up in heaven. People say that such a 
man died worth so many millions. It doesn't make any 
difference how much a man accumulates. He can't die 
worth anything, for he leaves it here. He is not worth a 
penny ; and so, if you want to save your money, lay it up 






ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN WORKERS. 



443 



in heaven where thieves cannot get hold of it. Make 
yourselves rich by thus investing in these good institutions ; 
maintain good works ; keep your Tract Society, your mis- 
sions. Wouldn't it be a glorious day if, instead of our go- 
ing around begging for money for these institutions, we 
could just sit in an office and have men send checks around. 
I have got tired and sick of going to men and begging for 
money. I hope the Lord of Heaven will stir up people so 
that they will be going around to see where they can invest 
their money. The ministers can tell them, for they know, 
and you that have money ought to consult them as to what 
is the best investment you can make. I want to be rich for 
eternity, nor for time. But how blind and short-sighted 
men are that are seeking to be rich just for time. Men 
accumulate millions just to make the way to hell easy for 
their children. It is almost sure ruin for a child to be left 
in this world with money and nothing to do. You talk 
about the young ladies of this city whom you call so for- 
tunate because they have got all the money they want and 
have nothing to do. It is unfortunate, I tell you, and they 
are ruined. I pity them from the bottom of my heart. 
It would be far better if they hadn't a penny. Be careful, 
says Paul, that you maintain good works. It is good ad- 
vice. Let us take it. 

Now, what we want is to have men established. I have 
been connected for fifteen years — at least before I started 
out on this preaching tour — with a mission Sabbath-school, 
and I have noticed this, that the teachers who are at the 
Sabbath-school fifty two Sundays in the year, are constantly 
reaping, and those teachers who are not constantly estab- 
lished, and are only in the Sunday-school about six 
months, and then give up discouraged, and if there is 
something better offers give up their place, they never suc- 
ceed. What we want is to be established in every word 
and work, and let us take up this word and work and do 



444 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



it thoroughly, and God's word has gone out that we shall 
reap if we faint not. I was very much interested some time 
ago in a young lady that lived in the city. I don't know 
her name, or I have forgotten it. She was about to go to 
China as the wife of a missionary on his way to some hea- 
then field. She had a large Sabbath-school class in the 
city and succeeded in getting a blessing upon many of her 
scholars through her efforts. She was very anxious to get 
some one who would look after her little flock and take care 
of them while she was gone. She had a brother who was not 
a Christian, and her heart was set on his being converted 
and taking her place as leader of the class. The young 
man — perhaps he is in this audience tq-day — refused to 
accept of Christ, but away in her closet alone she pleaded 
with God that her brother might be converted and take 
her place. She wanted to reproduce herself and that is 
what every Christian ought to do — get somebody else con- 
verted to take up your work. Well, the last morning came, 
and around the family altar as the moment drew near for 
the lady's departure, and they did not know when they 
should see her again, the father broke down, and the boy 
went up stairs. Just before she left for the train the boy 
came down, and putting his arms around his sister's neck, 
said to her, " My dear sister, I will take your Saviour for 
mine, and I will take care of your class for you," and the 
young man took her class, and the last I heard of him he 
was filling her place. There was a young lady established 
in good work. When she left here she got some one to 
carry it on. Let me say to you, young converts who have 
just commenced a Christian life — find some work to do for 
the Master. Go out into the vineyard at once and get 
some work to do. Just persevere, and if you don't see the 
fruit pretty near, and the work don't seem to prosper, go 
right on. These Christians that get discouraged and dis- 
heartened, God never uses, and His kingdom is never 



ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN WORKERS. 



445 



built up through them. What we want is good courage to 
persevere. 

Turn to Matthew, v. 16 : "Let your light so shine be- 
fore men that they may see your good works and glorify 
your Father which is in Heaven." Now the eyes of the 
whole Christian world are upon New York at the present 
time. They are looking to see just what you Christians 
are going to do, and if the work stops now, don't say it 
will be our fault. My dear friends, it will be your own. 
There has been no false excitement here. We have just 
preached the Gospel. To be sure, we have done it poorly, 
but it has been the same old Gospel. We have just held 
up Christ to the people, and if this work stops, bear in 
mind that it will be your own fault that you have not taken 
it up and carried it on. Thousands in this audience have 
got just as much ability and talent as I have got or as Mr. 
Sankey has got, if you would only use it. All you have to do 
is to bring out your talents that have lain dormant and use 
them. God holds you responsible for your influence. Use 
whatever influence you have got and bring it to bear upon 
your friends and upon those with whom you are ac- 
quainted, and do everything you can just to let your light 
shine, and let me say keep out of the world. But you say 
you are in the world. You may be in the world but not of 
it, just as a ship is in the water but not of it. The mo- 
ment the water begins to get into the ship it sinks. You 
are in the world : don't let the world be in you. That is 
the difference. 

I want to speak of one thing that has cheered me since 
coming here beyond measure, and that is the spirit of 
unity. We have not heard a word about denominations 
since I have been here. Thanks be to God we are bound 
up in one bundle, and the moment we understand each 
other a little better we shall be able to do greater work, 
and the hosts of hell will not prevail against us. 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 

(closing services at the n. y. hippodrome.) 

My text this evening is in the 14th chapter of Romans, 
4th verse, " God is able to make him stand." There are 
a great many luke-warm Christians that are themselves 
saved, and yet who really believe in their hearts that these 
young converts won't stand long. Some people will give 
them six weeks, and some six months, and then all will be 
over. That has been the cry ever since I can remember, 
ever since J have been a Christian. I suppose we will 
hear it to the end of time. Well, there are some who do 
not hold out, but think of the thousands and thousands 
that do. " He is able to make us stand";" and if you 
young converts in the morning of your Christian experience, 
learn this one lesson, it will save you from many a painful 
hour. Yes, it is God that will make you stand. You can- 
not stand yourself. 

I hear a young convert get up and say, " I am going 

to hold out." That is not the way to put it. You will not 

unless God lets you. He is able to make you stand. He 

was able to make Joseph stand there in Egypt ; He was 

able to make Elijah stand before Ahab : He was able to 

make Daniel stand in Babylon. So my friend, you need 

the same grace and the same power that all these did. 

They have gone on before you. Your strength lies in God, 

and not in yourself. The moment you lean on yourself, 

down you go. The moment we get self-contented and 
446 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 447 

think we are able to stand and overcome, we are on 
dangerous territory ; we are standing upon the edge of a 
precipice. When I first became a Christian I thought I 
would be glad when I got farther on, and got established. 
I thought I would be so strong and there would not be any 
danger ; but the longer I live, the more danger I see there 
is. The only hope of any Christian in this house is to 
keep hold of Christ. We may fall after we have been 
Christians for twenty years ; a good many fall at a very old 
age. 

But though we fall, we are not therefore lost. A man 
may fall and not be lost. Perhaps the old Adam comes 
uppermost and they commit some sin and then get dis- 
couraged. It is no sign that a person is not a Christian 
because he falls into sin. He is as much a Christian as 
ever if he repents and hates his sin. If he loves his sin 
and lives in it, he has never been truly converted. If he 
hates the sin and turns away from it, and mourns over it, 
it is a sign that he has been converted. If you fall into 
sin, do not get discouraged. Take it to God and confess 
it ; tell Him all about it. He will forgive. 

I want to guard you against self-confidence ; there is 
the danger. You must keep your eyes open, and not be 
self-confident. Your strength lies m Another, and not in 
yourself. Take Christ as your model, not any other man 
on the face of the earth ; because then, if you do some- 
times make mistakes, if you do sometimes fall into sin, He 
will restore you. Just keep your eye fixed upon Him and 
remember all the while that He is able to make you stand. 
When we get into temptation, He is able to make a way 
for your escape, and to deliver you from every temptation. 
He won't suffer you to be tempted more than you can 
bear. In the second chapter of Hebrews and the 18th 
verse, we read " For in that he himself hath suffered, be- 
ing tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." 



448 GLAD TIDINGS. 

It is encouraging to think He has been in this dark 
world and knows all about its trials and temptations. 
"He is able to succor those that are tempted." When 
temptation comes, it won't crush you ; it won't bear you 
down. Perhaps the old nature will come up in you, but 
you must look to Him for strength. You know it is an 
old maxim " Don't give up to your impulse." That is not 
the advice I give. I say live right up to your impulse ; 
live up to all the impulse that God gives you. Don't be 
afraid you are not going to have grace enough in the 
future. That is a mistake. Use all the grace that God 
gives you ; He has plenty ; the more you use, the more 
you'll get ; He is able to succor them that are tempted: 

About getting discouraged, — when you sin, you know 
they say short accounts make long friends. Keep short 
accounts with God. You should see the face of God every 
morning before you see the face of any human being. If 
you come to the cross every morning, you never will get 
but one day's journey from the cross. You must say to 
yourself, " I want to feed my soul as well as my body a 
breakfast every morning. I want to see the face of God 
before I see the face of any earthly man." Just keep close 
to the cross, and close to Him, and if anything has gone 
wrong during the day or evening, do not sleep until that 
account has been settled. Take it to Christ and tell it 
right out to Him ; tell Him how you are sorry, and ask 
Him to forgive you. He delights to forgive. That is 
what I mean by keeping a short account with God. You 
know when you go to a grocery store and get a little sugar, 
for instance, every few days, in a short time you will soon 
find that the grocer has a bill against you for ten pounds. 
You are surprised, and you likely say you never had it. 
You forget how much you did get. Perhaps then you 
quarrel with the grocer, and you have a great deal of trouble 
from it. Perhaps if you kept short accounts you would 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 44 g 

remember what you owed. Keep short accounts, or 
else you wont prosper. If you sin, bear in mind that 
you have an Advocate in Jesus Christ. We read in 
2d Timothy, ist chapter, 12th verse, "Nevertheless I 
am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and 
I know that He is able to keep that which I have 
committed unto him against that day." A man was 
asked what his persuasion was. He said it was the same 
as Paul's. I don't know what Paul's persuasion was. All 
persuasions claim him. Sankey says he is a Methodist. 
" Verily I am not ashamed, for I know whom I believe, 
and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I 
have committed to him." That is Paul's persuasion. You 
may call it what you have a mind to, it is a good persua- 
sion. If you have really been converted you have com- 
mitted your soul, your body, your reputation, your life, your 
money, everything you have, to the Lord. Stick to this 
text : " He is able to keep that which I have committed 
to him. If the devil comes and tries to make you every- 
thing else but a Christian, don't listen to him,"but just re- 
fer him right over to Christ. Tell him you have commit- 
ted your case to Christ. He will take care of your cause ; 
He is able to keep that which you have committed to 
Him. 

A little boy was going home from school one day and 
met a big fellow who wanted to fight with him. He said 
" Well, wait till I go and fetch my big brother," and he 
ran off after his big brother and away ran the boy. So 
you tell Satan when he threatens to convince you, that 
you will go after Christ, and let Him settle it for you. 
You are no match for Satan. He is stronger than you 
are ; but Satan flies when you bring Christ. Then you 
are saved, and that is your only refuge. Jesus will be to 
you an Elder Brother. 

A man with whom I was acquainted bought out a cer- 
29 



45° 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



tain store. Everybody predicted that he would fail. Two 
or three men had failed one after another in the store, 
with more capital than that man had. Well, he went on, 
and on, and did not fail, and every one wondered why he 
got along so well. By and by it leaked out that he had a 
rich brother who kept furnishing money, and he kept close 
to him. So if you will only keep close to your elder 
Brother, He has all the treasures of heaven to place at 
your disposal ; He will keep you. There is not rouble about 
your going back to the world if you keep close to Him. 

Men go and put their money in the Bank of England, 
thinking it the safest Bank in the world. But why is it 
safe ? Because every night when it grows dark you will 
see a whole band of soldiers going to that Bank. And 
they stand around it and guard it all night. So are the 
sentinels of Heaven camped around about Gods' own chil- 
dren to guard them. God has legions of angels that He 
can send down to protect us when we call upon Him. 
Our help is in God alone. 

O my friends, when Satan comes to you and tries to 
lure you away, bear in mind that Christ is your keeper, 
and you are not able to keep yourselves. We want these 
young converts to go to work in God's service. " God is 
able to make you stand," God has grace enough. He 
wants you to come up to His throne and get all the grace 
you need to enable you to do the work. Now every single 
convert ought to be good for at least a dozen more, and be 
able to win at least twelve other souls to Christ. A convert 
lately gave me a list of names of those whom he had been 
trying to lead to Christ since he was converted. He was 
converted the 3rd of February, and he brought me a list of 
fifty-nine names of persons whom he had tried to lead to 
Christ during that time. Every young convert ought to be 
good for a dozen at least. If you are rescued you ought 
to try to rescue others. Every man, woman and child who 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 



45 1 



is a Christian should go to work in this service. He says, 
" My grace shall abound that I shall be ready for every 
good work." One day I saw a steel engraving that I liked 
very much. I thought it was the finest thing I ever had 
seen, at the time, and I bought it. It was a picture of a 
woman coming out of the water, and clinging with both 
arms to the cross. There she came out of the drowning 
waves with both arms around the cross perfectly safe. 
Afterwards, I saw another, picture that spoiled this one 
for me entirely, it was so much more lovely. It was a 
picture of a person coming out of the dark waters, with 
one arm clinging to the cross and with the other she was 
lifting some one else out of the waves. That is what I 
like. Keep a firm hold upon the cross, but always try to 
rescue another from the drowning. If you are rescued, 
haste to the rescue of some one else. Then you become 
stronger and stronger. Everything you do for Christ 
makes you grow in grace. " He that waters, shall him- 
self be watered." The souls of these people that never do 
anything for Christ, become all dried up. It is hard to 
find any chords running from their souls to Him, or to 
others, because they never try to do anything for anybody. 
When I was at Mr. Spurgeon's house, he showed me 
some pictures of his twin boys. He had had them taken 
every year since they were born and they were then seven- 
teen. You look at the pictures from year to year, and 
there is not much difference between them ; but in the 
seventeen years there is a great difference. So with you 
young converts ; — there is not much difference in you from 
year to year ; but as you grow in grace, in the course of 
seventeen years there will be a very great change. You 
want to grow from week to week, from month to month, 
and from year to year steadily, so you will become stron- 
ger in the service of God. " God is able to make all grace 
abound toward you." 



45 2 GLAD TIDINGS. 

You should try to learn from those who have been long 
in the Church. If you take my advice you will select 
your friends from experienced Christians. You must keep 
in the company of people who know more than yourself. 
That's the way I do. Of course I get the best of the bar- 
gain that way, but that is what you want ; you can learn 
something of them and will not be mingling with the un- 
godly and the unconverted. You need not become like 
ungodly people when you happen to be thrown with them ; 
you can be in the world and not of it. Not only that, but 
what you want is to get in love with this blessed Bible ; 
and the moment you get full of Bible truths, the world has 
lost its power. Then you wont be saying : " Have I got 
to give up this ? Have I got to give up that ? You never 
hear Bible Christians talk in that way. There are some 
things I used to like to do before I was converted that 
I don't do now ; but thank God ; I don't want to do them. 
God has turned my appetite against such things. I have 
been fed upon this blessed Bible, until I have no longer 
any taste for the literature I used to like. 

There are people who talk about killing and say they 
like to read novels to kill time. But a good Christian 
does not need to do that ; he never has time enough. 
Why, if there were forty eight hours instead of twenty- 
four, in a day and night, we would still want more time to 
work for the Lord. It is only a little while, a few days and 
hours, that we stay here and we have to do all that is given 
us to do in that short time. No child of God ought to talk 
of killing time. 

I have one rule about books. I do not read any book, 
unless it will help me to understand the book. I want to 
tell you right here, that this is not anything that I have to 
give up. It is a great pleasure to get a book that helps 
unfold the blessed Bible. It is manna to my soul. If you 
young converts get in love with the Bible it will help you 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 



453 



wonderfully. I advise you to go into a good Bible-class, 
and so get experienced Christians to help you. Go there 
and learn, and then go out and help teach others, and thus 
you will grow in grace. I want to have you understand 
one thing : that I am in favor of all men and women that 
love Jesus Christ, uniting with some church. And let me 
say, if the man who is your minister preaches the gospel, 
you stand by him ; pray for him. What a help it is for a 
man that is preaching to have a lot of people in the pews 
praying for him. Don't go to church just to criticize. Any 
one can do that. If you feel inclined to criticize, just stop 
and ask yourself whether you could do it any better. Some 
men only make one mistake, that of finding imperfections 
in everybody and everything. I have got done looking for 
perfection in this world. If the minister does not preach 
the gospel, go out of his church and get into some church 
where the gospel is preached. I don't care what church it 
is ; but if a man does not preach the gospel don't go to his 
church. And do not be running from one church to an- 
other. Go to one church and stand by your minister. If 
he holds up Christ, preaches the glorious gospel of Jesus 
Christ, stand by him. In Romans, 4th chapter and 20th 
verse, it says, " He staggered not at the promise of God 
through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to 
God. And being fully persuaded that what He had 
promised He was able also to perform." 

Now, my friends, bear in mind that God's word is true, 
and it will help you wonderfully when you take up that word 
of God, to realize that every word of it is true. Infidels and 
sceptics will try to make you think it is not true. When they 
come to me and say that, I tell them " Well, if they'can get 
me a better Bible, I will give this up, but not until then. 
But when there is no book that will bear any comparison 
with it or touch it, why should we give it up ? What has 
infidelity to give us in the place of it ? Bear in mind that 



454 GLAD TIDINGS. 

these promises are all true. " He staggered not at the 
promises of God." Abraham was fully persuaded that God 
was able to do what he had promised to do. 

An old man told me that he had marked at all the 
promises of God the letters "P. T." — which stood for 
"Proved" and "Tried." None of the promises of God 
ever will or can fail. If you feed upon these promises you 
will become rich in grace. There is no discount on any 
word God has ever said. You know when Christ was born, 
it says that Caesar sent out a proclamation that the whole 
world should be taxed, and so Mary was brought to Beth- 
lehem. God had said that the child should be born at 
Nazareth, and it could not by any possibility have been 
born at Jerusalem. That tax was not collected for 
nine years after. The virgin was brought to Bethlehem 
just at that time, that the word of God might be fulfilled. 
"Abraham staggered not at the promises of God." Some 
times when our duty seems to promise some very difficult 
and almost impossible thing, people say, " But how is He 
going to do it ? " I don't know how, but that is none of 
your business. A colored woman had it about right when 
she said that if God should tell her to jump through a stone 
wall, she would jump right through — that getting through 
would be God's work and not her's ; He would see to it if 
she did what she was told. Take His Word as " a lamp 
to your feet and a light to your path " to guide you through 
this dark world. 

In the 24th verse of Jude it says, " Now unto Him that 
is able to keep you from falling and to present you fault- 
less before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy." 
That is one of the sweetest verses in the whole Word of 
God ; not the sweetest — it is hard to tell which is the 
sweetest verse in the Bible. It is like a man that has ten 
children ; he cannot tell which he likes best. How 






ADDRESS TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 455 

precious, how sweet these promises ! Some converts have 
an idea that sometimes they have to fall. Some people 
think they have to get lukewarm sometimes, and wander off 
into the world. You do not get that idea from the Bible. 
An old man said to me once, " I am an old man now, but 
I never have lost sight of Christ since I first became con- 
verted." You have not got to fall ; do not believe it for a 
moment. " Unto Him that is able to keep you from fall- 
ing, and to present you faultless before the throne of God 
with exceeding great joy." May all in this assembly from 
this night be so kept from falling, and so presented before 
the throne. There is an institution in London where they 
take the poor little street Arabs in. They take him in and 
the first thing they do is to have his picture taken, just as 
he looks when they find him, in his rags and dirt. Then? 
after he has grown up there, and has had all the benefit of 
the institution, before he goes they have his photograph 
taken again; and they give him the two photographs. 
One is to show him how he looked when he came to them, 
and the other, that he may compare them. It would be a 
good thing if we could remember ourselves distinctly as we 
were when the Lord first found us, and compare it with our- 
selves when He leaves us on the-hill-tops of glory. 

It says in Deuteronomy : " He found him, He kept 
him, He led him about in the wilderness, and kept him as 
the apple of His eye." The Lord does it all. He found 
you ; you did not find Him. People say they are seeking 
the Lord. The Lord seeks you. It is a double seeking. 
Christ seeks the sinner and the sinner seeks Him. It does 
not take long for an anxious Saviour and an anxious sinner 
to meet. The moment you are ready and willing to belong 
to Christ, He is ready and willing to save you. 

Some people ask me questions about their daily walk 
and conduct. They say, "I would like to know whether 
it is right for me to go to the theatre ? " " I would like to 



4^6 GLAD TIDINGS. 

know whether it is right for me to smoke ? " or, " to drink 
moderately ? " I cannot carry your consciences ; Christ 
does not lay down rules ; He lays down principles. One 
rule I have had is this : If there is anything I am troubled 
about in my conscience, and am uncertain whether it is 
right or not, I give Christ the benefit of the doubt. It is 
better to be a little too strict than too liberal. And let me 
say to you young converts and you Christians here, the 
eyes of the world are upon you ; they are watching. 

For myself, I could not go to the theatre ; I would not 
like to have my children go. I do not do anything myself 
that I would not like to have them do. I could not smoke, 
because I would not want my boy to smoke. I could not 
read those flashy novels. I have no taste for them, no 
desire to read them ; but if I did I would not do it. But, 
if you live to please Him, you will not have any trouble in 
these things. He says, " If any man lack wisdom, let him 
call on God ; He will give liberally to all. 

Another rule is : Don't do anything you cannot feel 
like praying over. Once I received an invitation to be at 
the opening of a large billiard hall. I suppose they 
thought it was a good joke to invite me. I went before 
the time came and asked the man if he meant it. He said 
yes. I asked him if I might bring a friend along. He 
said I might. I said, " If you say or do anything that will 
grieve my friend I may speak to him during your exer- 
cises." They didn't know what I meant, and knitted their 
brows and looked puzzled. At last he asked, " You are 
not going to pray, are you ? We never want any praying 
here." "Well," I said, " I never go where I cannot pray ; 
but I'll come round." " No," said he, " we don't want 
you." " Well, I'll come, anyway, since you invited me," 
said I. But he rather insisted that I shouldn't, and finally 
I told him : " We'll compromise the matter. I won't come 
if you will let me pray with you now." So he agreed to 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 



457 



that, and I got down with one rum-seller on each side of 
me, and prayed that they might fail in their business, and 
never have any more success in it from that day. Well, 
they went on for about two months, and then, sure enough, 
they failed. God answered prayer that time. 

In Europe in a place where there was a good deal of 
whiskey distilled, one of the men in the business was a 
church member, and got a little anxious in his conscience 
about his business. He came and asked me if I thought that 
a man could not be an honest distiller. I said, you should 
do, whatever you do, for the glory of God. If you can get 
down and pray about a barrel of whiskey, and say for in- 
stance, when you sell it, " O Lord God, let this whiskey be 
blessed to the world," it is probably honest. 

Do not live to please yourself. Live to please Christ. 
If you cannot do a thing honestly, give it up let the con- 
sequences be what they may. If you take my advice you 
will never touch strong drink as long as you live. Nearly 
all the young converts that have fallen in Europe have been 
led into it by that cursed cup. Yes, but you say, some of 
the church-members, some of the christians that stand high, 
drink moderately. Well, don't you touch it if they do. 
Some men have strong wills and can tell where to stop ; 
but bear in mind that ninety-nine out of a hundred have not 
strong wills, and your son may be the very next one to go 
too far. If it is not an injury to yourselves, give it up for 
Christ' sake, and for the sake of others. And you that 
have once been slaves to it, come out and try to rescue 
others who are still slaves to it. As Dr. Bonner of Philadel- 
phia said. " Be sure you do not tarnisji the old family name. 
You have been born into the family of God, and you must 
sustain its high credit." Some of these old families of New 
York think a good deal of their names ; and that is right. 
A good name is worth more than riches. Now that you 
have become the sons and daughters of God, do not dis- 



458 GLAD TIDINGS. 

grace the old family name. The eyes of the world are upon 
you, walk as a son of a king, as a daughter of heaven, a 
child of God, the world will become better for you, and by 
your walk and conversation you will light others to Christ. 

Turn to the 20th chapter of Acts, 326. verse. " And 
now brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of 
his grace, which is able to build up and to give an inherit- 
ance among all them which are sanctified." That was 
Paul's farewell to the Ephesians. O, how sweet it is ! " He 
is able to lift you up." Some of the young converts have 
got their Bibles out, I see. That is right. I marked that 
a good many years ago. It has been a great help to me. 
Paul had been three years among them, and had prayed 
and wept over them. If you learn your Bible well you are 
certain to be good Christians. If the word of God is not 
hid in our hearts, how can the Holy Ghost work through 
us. 

But let me give you a caution. You must not think 
that you may stop right here and spend the rest of your 
days giving your experience. I want to warn you against 
becoming self-satisfied. The moment that young converts 
come to be wise and to win some souls to Christ, Satan 
comes up and says, "You are getting along very well," and 
" Yes that is a good act ; an admirable work you are do- 
ing ; " and then they get so puffed up with spiritual pride 
that God cannot use them. 

The next danger is that they may be so afraid they will 
get puff ed up, that they don't do anything. We have noth- 
ing to be proud of, really. Talk about the great work we 
are doing here. We haven't done anything. We ought to 
hang our heads to-night and be ashamed of ourselves, — 
not ashamed of Christ, but of ourselves, — there is a good 
deal of difference between those two things. We have not 
done anything worth speaking of ; there is no chance of 
boasting. Why, if the Christians of New York really did 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 



459 



come forward and exert themselves, what a time there 
would be ! Be sure you do not get lifted up with spiritual 
pride. God will punish that; he hates spiritual pride* 
Satan knows that if he can get us puffed up with 
spiritual pride, it is all he wants ; so he comes up and says, 
" What a glorious light he is. He is one of the brightest 
lights of the church." Look out for spiritual pride, as for 
one of your greatest enemies. 

You have got nothing to be proud of. If you are ever 
used at all, bear in mind that it is God speaking in you, 
and not you yourself. 

We do not say that gaspipe gives the light ; it only con- 
veys it. If we have any light in us, it is Christ's light. 
Let us be careful that we do not fall into that sin of being 
proud and lifted up. 

That little word " able " — may it sink down deep into 
your hearts to-night. He is able to do all for you that you 
need to have done ; and if you but make up your minds 
to rely on Him you will have strength as you need it. 

It seems as if during the past ten weeks the Lord has 
wonderfully answered prayers, and the tide has risen here 
until it seems very high. Once I was told of a little child who 
lay dying. As its breath grew feeble, she said, " Lift me, 
papa." And he put his hand under the child and lifted her 
a little; and then she whispered "higher," and he raised 
her higher, and she still said " higher," and again " higher, 
higher," until he lifted her just as high as his arms could 
reach, until at last her Heavenly Father lifted her into his 
Eternal Kingdom. 

So our prayer ought to be " Higher, higher, nearer my 
God to Christ." Every day we ought to make a day's 
march toward Heaven, and nearer and nearer to Him. 

I do not like these farewell meetings. I want from 
the depth of my heart to bless you for all your kindness 
to us here. I am glad so many have been blessed in their 



4 6o GLAD TIDINGS. 

souls. Bear in mind that we shall pray for you, and if we 
do not see you again we shall look for you on the morning 
of the Resurrection. I don't like to say good-bye. But I 
can say, as I once heard Lucius Hart say : " I'll bid you 
all good-night, and I'll meet you in the morning." May 
God bless you all ! 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 



Evangelistic Services — How to conduct them. 
— A person said to me, " What do you mean by Evangelis- 
tic services ? Is not all service Evangelistic ? What do you 
mean by preaching the Gospel ? Are not all services in 
churches and all meetings preaching the Gospel ? " No. 
There is a good deal of difference. There are three ser- 
vices—at least there ought to be — in every church, and 
every one ought to keep them in their mind. There is 
worshipping God. That is not preaching the Gospel at 
all. We come to the house of God to worship at times, 
when we meet around the Lord's table — that is worship, 
or ought to be. Then there is teaching — building up 
God's people. That is not preaching the Gospel. Then 
there is proclaiming the good news of the Gospel to the 
world, to the unsaved. Now, the question we have before 
us is, How can these services be conducted to make them 
profitable ? Well, I should say you have to conduct them 
to interest the people. If they go to sleep, they certainly 
want to be roused up, and if one method don't wake them 
up, try another. But I think we ought to use our common 
sense, if you will allow me the word. We talk a good deal 
about it, but I think it is about the least sense we have, 
especially in the Lord's work. If one method don't suc- 
succeed, let us try another. This preaching to empty seats 
don't pay. If people won't come to hear us, let us go 

4 6! 



462 GLAD TIDINGS. 

where they are. We want to preach. Go into some 
neighborhood and get some persons to invite you into their 
house, and get them into the kitchen, and preach there ; 
but make it a point to interest the people, and as soon 
as they get interested they will follow you and fill the 
churches. 

Now I have come to this conclusion, that if we are 
going to have successful Gospel meetings, we have got to 
have a little more life in them. Life is found in singing 
new hymns, for instance. I know some churches that have 
been singing about a dozen hymns for the last twenty years, 
such hymns as " Rock of Ages," " There is a fountain filled 
with blood," etc. The hymns are always good, but we 
want a variety. We want new hymns as well as the old 
ones. I find it wakes up a congregation very much to 
bring in now and then a new hymn. And if you cannot 
wake them up with preaching let us sing it into them. I 
believe the time is coming when we will make a good deal 
more of just singing the Gospel. Then when a man is con- 
verted let us have him in these meetings giving his testi- 
mony. Some people are afraid of that. I believe the se- 
cret of John Wesley's success was that he sent every man 
to work as soon as he was converted. Of course you have 
to guard that point. Some say they become spiritually 
proud — no doubt of that ; but if they don't go to work they 
become spiritually lazy, and I don't know what's the dif- 
ference. 

Now, the first impulse of the young convert is to go and 
publish what Christ has done for him. Sometimes a young 
convert will wake up a whole community and a whole town, 
just merely telling what the Lord has done for him ; and it 
is good to bring in these witnesses and let them speak. 
Then another thing. In a good many towns where we 
have union meetings we change ministers every night, and 
a good many special religious meetings have been organ- 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 



463 



ized, and proved perfect failures. I am getting letters all 
the time telling about special meetings, how the people 
turned out well, but there were no results, and on inquiry 
I found they had a Methodist minister one night, a Baptist 
minister another, an Episcopalian minister another, a Con- 
gregational minister another, in order to keep all denomina- 
tions in, and the result was they preached everybody out 
of doors. You could see right on the face of it that that 
would be the result. One man gets the people all inter- 
ested, and just at the point where he needs to continue his 
own ministrations another steps in and he goes out. And 
so there is no getting hold of the people. Now I believe 
we have got to have one man. 

I remember in Chicago, the last Winter I was there we 
had preaching every afternoon. We went out with invita- 
tions into saloons, billiard-halls, &c, and we got a large 
audience there every afternoon, and we had a new minister 
every day. We wanted to bring in all denominations to 
keep harmony, and I believe there was one solitary conver- 
sion after preaching thirty days. If we had only stuck to 
one minister I believe we would have done a great work 
then and there, and if we are going to have successful 
evangelistic services we cannot be changing speakers every 
night. And that is why it is best to get a man out of town 
and all will unite on that one man. I wish we could get 
rid of this jealousy. If we could unite on one man and 
support him with our prayers and our money, if it need be, 
and just work with him, there would be results. I never 
knew it to fail yet. It is just this party feeling that comes 
in and prevents the good, results we expect. We are 
afraid this denomination won't like it, and that denomina- 
tion won't be properly represented. 

Then these meetings ought to be made short. I find a 
great many are killed because they are too long. The 
minister speaks five minutes, and a minister's five minutes 



464 GLAD TIDINGS. 

is always ten, and his ten minutes is always twenty [laugh- 
ter] \ and the result is you preach everybody into the spirit 
and out of it before the meeting is over. When the people 
leave they are glad to go home, and ought to go home. 
Now, you send the people away hungry and they will come 
back again. There was a man in London who preached 
in the open air until everybody left him, and somebody 
said, " Why did you preach so long ? " " Oh," said he, " I 
thought it would be a pity to stop while there was anybody 
listening." [Laughter.] It is a good deal better to cut 
right off, then people will come back again to hear. 



How to Conduct Prayer Meetings. — I have noticed, 
said he, in travelling up and down the country, and after 
mingling with a great many ministers, that it is not the 
man that can preach the best that is the most successful, 
but the man that knows how to get his people together to 
pray. He has more freedom. It is so much easier to 
preach to an audience that is in full sympathy with you 
than to those who are criticising all the time. It chills your 
heart through and through. Now, if we could only have 
our prayer-meetings what they ought to be, and people go, 
not out of any sense of duty but because they delight to go, 
it would be a great help to a minister in his Sunday ser- 
vices. Now, I find it a great help in prayer-meetings to 
get the people right up close together, and then get myself 
right down among them. I believe many a meeting is lost 
by the people being scattered. 

Another important thing is to see that the ventilation 
is all right. Sometimes I have been in rooms where I 
think the air must have been in there five or six years. 
You cannot always trust the janitors to take care of it. 
The people get sleepy, and you think it is your fault. Very 
often such a thing is the fault of bad ventilation. See that 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 465 

you get fresh air — not too hot, and not too cold, but pure. 
Then it is a good thing to have a subject. Let all the peo- 
ple know a week beforehand what the subject is going to 
be. You take the subject of Faith, say, and ask a brother 
or two privately to say a little on that subject. If they 
say, " I cannot get my thoughts together ; " or, " I am so 
frightened when I get up that I tremble all over," then tell 
him just to get up and read a verse. It won't be long be- 
fore they will add a few words to that verse, and after a 
while they will want to talk too much, and the meetings 
thus become very profitable to those men. What we want 
is variety. Instead e>f having Deacon Jones and Deacon 
Smith and Deacon Brown do all the praying and all the 
talking, have somebody else say something in this way, and 
thus create an interest. 

I would not have the minister always take the lead, for 
I have noticed when the minister takes the lead, if he ever 
goes off there is a collapse. Now it seems to me a minis- 
ter should get different ones into the chair, and when he 
goes off the meetings won't miss him, and there will be no 
falling off. Not only that, but he is training his members 
to work. They will go out around the town and in school- 
houses, and preach the Gospel, and we multiply preachers 
and workers in that way if they are only just taught to take 
part. Now I believe there are a great many in our church 
prayer-meetings that could be brought out and made to be 
a great help if the ministers would only pay their attention 
to it. How many lawyers, physicians, public speakers 
we have who do nothing to actively help along the work, 
and I believe that difficulty could be removed if the minis- 
ter would take a little pains. Let the father whose son has 
been converted get up and give thanks. Have once in a 
while a thanksgiving meeting. It wakes up a church won- 
derfully, once in a while to let the young converts relate 
their experiences. Then you say, what are you going to do 

30 



4 66 GLAD TIDINGS. 

with these men that talk so long ? I would talk to them 
privately, and tell them they must try to be shorter. And it is 
a good thing sometimes for ministers themselves not to be 
too long. Sometimes they read a good deal of Scripture 
and talk until perhaps only fifteen minutes is left, and then 
they complain because Deacon Smith or Jones or some one 
else talks too long. Just let the minister strike the key 
note of the meeting, and if he can't do that in ten minutes 
he can't at all. Very often a minister takes up a chapter 
and exhausts it, and says everything he can think of in the 
chapter, and then can you wonder a layman cannot say 
more w r ho has had no study of the subject ? Give out the 
subject a week ahead, let the minister take five or ten min- 
utes in opening, and then let the different ones take part. 
That would be greater variety. When a man takes part he 
gets greatly interested himself. It was pretty true what 
the old deacon said, that when he took part in the meet- 
ings they were very interesting, and when he didn't they 
seemed very dull. [Laughter.] 



Suggestion to Church Members. — If the ministers 
would encourage their members to be scattered among the 
audience, to never mind their pew but sit back by the 
door if need be, or in the gallery, where they can watch the 
faces of the audience, it would be a good thing. In Scot- 
land I met a man who with his wife would go and sit 
among them, as they said, to watch for souls. When they 
saw any one who seemed impressed they would go to him 
after the meeting and talk with him. Nearly all the con- 
versions in that church during the last fifteen months had 
been made through that influence. Now, if we could only 
have from thirty to fifty members of the church whose 
business it is just to watch, and you laymen and laywomen 
to afterwards clinch them in. The best way in our regular 



PR A YER MEETING TALKS. 467 

churches is to let the workers all help pull the net in. You 
will get a good many fishes ; it won't be now and then one, 
but scores and scores. Now, a stranger coming into a 
church likes to have some one speak to him. He does not 
feel insulted at all. A young man coming to New York a 
stranger and going to church, if some one asks him to go 
into the inquiry room it makes him happy and cheers him. 
Two young men came into our inquiry room here the other 
night, and after a convert had talked with them, and showed 
them the way, the light broke in upon them. They were 
asked, " Where do you go to church ? " They gave the name 
of the church where they had been going. Said one, " I 
advise you to go and see the minister of that church. " 
They said, " We don't want to go there any more ; we have 
gone there for six years and no one has spoken to us." 

A man was preaching about Christians recognizing each 
other in heaven, and some one said, " I wish he would 
preach about recognizing each other on earth." In one 
place where I preached there was no special interest. 
I looked over the great hall of the old circus building where 
it was held, and saw men talking to other men here and 
there. I said to the Secretary of the Young Men's Christ- 
ian Association who got up the meeting, " Who are these 
men?" He said, "They are a band of workers." They 
were all scattered through the hall, and preaching and 
watching for souls. Out of the fifty of them, forty one of 
their number had got a soul each and were talking and 
preaching with them. We have been asleep long enough. 
When the laity wake up and try and help the minister the 
minister will preach better. If the minister finds he has 
not been drawing the net right, if a good many in his 
church go to work and help him he will do better ; he will 
prepare the sermons with that one thing in view. Will this 
draw men to Christ ? 

I do not see how men can preach without inquiry meet- 



468 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ings. I like to see the converts. One minister in Scotland 
said he did not believe in disturbing the impression. If 
he had made an impression he did not want anyone to say 
anything. He said, "After you sow the seed you don't 
want to go and dig it up to see whether it has sprouted." 
But I told him, " The farmers all harrow it in after it is 
sowed." [Applause.] 



Address to Christians. — One thing has been laid 
upon my mind in the last hour, and that is, that we should 
pray to God to fill us with the spirit. We have had a good 
many questions asked us by the young converts about how 
they should go to work. There is a great deal of work 
done by people who have not the power of the spirit ; and 
to work without the power is like beating against the air. 

I would call your attention to one thought : the gift of 
the spirit for service. We may be sons and daughters of 
God ; but we may be sons and daughters without power. 
God has a great many children that have not got any 
power. Their words are idle words ; they might just as 
well speak in an unknown tongue ; their speech is " as 
sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." I suppose many 
of us have felt what it is to be preaching as though we were 
preaching to the air, our own hearts not moved, nor any 
one else's. When you go home, take your Bible an hour 
or two, studying up this one subject, the gift of the 
Holy Ghost for service. In the 4th chapter of Luke, the 
18th verse, we read : "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel." It 
was after the spirit came upon Him that he commenced 
His ministry. Then He went back to Nazareth, and His 
work was blessed. 

We find in the 20th chapter of John, these words : 
" And when He had said this He breathed on them and 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 469 

said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." Of course 
His disciples had been converted before this. Back in the 
7th chapter of John we find Him saying on that great day 
of the feast, " If any man thirst let him come unto Me and 
drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath 
said, — out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 
Greater works than I have done you shall do, because I 
come of the Father, and the Holy Ghost shall be upon you 
which also comes of Him." 

If we are only imbued with power from on High, it will 
then be ours to work for God. You cannot get water out 
of a dry well. You may pump and pump and pump, and 
the old machine will squeak, but there won't any water 
come. Sometimes pumps are dry and you can't make any 
water come until you pour in a little at the top. So we 
have got to have water poured on us, or we cannot get any 
more power than a dry pump. What we want is this wa- 
ter of the Spirit poured upon ourselves. Oh, may He pour 
it upon us this afternoon. 

In the 20th chapter of Luke and the 22 d verse, it says, 
"When he had said this He breathed on them and saith 
unto them Receive ye the Holy Ghost." Of course the 
disciples received the Spirit there. 

Some people think because they have had the Holy 
Ghost resting upon them at one time in power, it is going 
to remain. But, I tell you many a man that got converted 
and received the Holy Ghost, and was used ten years ago 
for the service of the Lord has not got the power that he 
once had. He may be a good Christian, but he has lost 
the power. The people in his church know it. They say 
to each other, "What has come over our pastor ? " He has 
not got the unction, he has not got the Holy Ghost. Oh, 
shall we not seek and pray for it here to-day ? May the 
God of Heaven breathe upon us one breath from the upper 
world before we go hence ! To see that we are not to be 



47 o 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



satisfied with being filled once, turn over into the second 
chapter of Acts. He told His disciples to go back to Je- 
rusalem and tarry there until they were imbued from on 
High. Those men had already been converted before. 
My friends, I think we do not tarry at Jerusalem until we 
get the power. We forget about the Holy Ghost, and 
about the necessity of our being anointed for service. 
These very men that He breathed upon then were after- 
wards filled with the Holy Ghost, as we read in the 4th 
chapter of Acts. Peter and James and John had not re- 
mained full. We are greatly mistaken in thinking that we 
may remain satisfied with past mercies of grace that God 
gave us away back these ten years ago. We do not love 
the fresh manna. In the 3d chapter of John comes Nic- 
odemus. In the 4th chapter of John He holds out the 
cup of salvation, and it becomes a well of water. The 
water always runs to one level as it comes down. The 
4th chapter of John is a better Christian than the 3d chap- 
ter. The best glories of a Christian are mentioned in the 
7th chapter, where it says : " Out of His belly shall flow 
rivers of living water." In Luke we find it mentioned as 
a well, in John, a river. You know there are two ways of 
digging wells now. In one process, they do not stop as 
soon as they have come to water ; but they dig on down 
carefully through the rock and sand, until they come to a 
lower strata, and a stream of the clearest crystal water 
starts and gushes to the top, like a fountain. You do not 
have to pump the water up from such a well. It comes 
of itself. 

While I was in England I met a minister whose health 
had become so poor that he had to get an assistant to help 
him preach. He could only preach once a week, and not 
always that. One day, in meeting, the spirit of God came 
upon him anew, and he got freshly anointed. He came 
down to London a year afterwards and told me that dur- 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 471 

ing the past year he had preached eight sermons a week. 
He said he had never been so well in all his life. I be- 
lieve it is not work that breaks down our health ; it is 
pumping without the water ! What we want to do is just 
to wait on God until He gives it to us. I know a minister 
who told me he felt that he was preaching without this 
anointing, and he felt that his sermons had not been 
blessed for a long long time. I know it was my own ex- 
perience. I never like to talk about myself; it always 
makes me feel like a fool, but this may do some of you 
some good. 

About four years ago I got into a cold state. It did 
not seem as if there was any unction resting upon my min- 
istry. For four long months God seemed to be just show- 
ing me myself. I found I was ambitious ; I was not preach- 
ing for Christ ; I was preaching for ambition. I found 
every thing in my heart that ought not to be there. For 
four months, a wrestling went on within me, and I was a 
miserable man. But after four months the anointing came. 
It came upon me as I was walking in the streets of New 
York. Many a time I have thought of it since I have been 
here. At last I had returned to God again, and I was 
wretched no longer. I almost prayed, in my joy, " O stay 
Thy hand ! " I thought this earthen vessel would break. 
He filled me so full of the spirit. If I have not been a 
different man since, I do not know myself. I think I have 
accomplished more in the last four years than in all the 
rest of my life. But, O, it was preceded by a wrestling 
and a hard struggle ? I think I have never got out of this 
miserable selfishness. There was a time when I wanted to 
see my little vineyard blessed and I could not get out of 
it ; but I could work for the whole world now. I would 
like to go round the world and tell the perishing millions 
of a Saviour's love. 

If in these closing months here we could get baptized 



472 GLAD TIDINGS. 

by the Holy Ghost, would it not be blessed ? Is there not 
a hungering and a thirsting to be filled to-day ? " Blessed 
are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they 
shall be filled." There is the word of the Lord Jesus ; Is 
He not here to-day ? Is not He able to fill us ? If He 
would imbue us all, and expel all jealousy and sectarian- 
ism, would it not be blessed ? He can conquer this earthly 
will and fill us with the Holy Ghost as were the early 
Christians. Your congregations will find your new anoint- 
ing out, if you take the grace and the anointing away with 
you. They will say to each other directly, " What does it 
mean ? What has come over our minister ? " O, God grant 
that self may lose its interest for us to-day, and that Jesus 
may burst upon us with a new view \ that we may behold 
Him to-day as we never yet beheld Him ; and may He 
give us fresh anointing ! 



Christ the Good Samaritan. — Luke x. 25. — In this 
picture we get the whole gospel. Jerusalem was the city of 
peace. Jericho was a city condemned, and from one to the 
other was all the way down hill — an easy road to go, as the 
unfortunate man thought when he started on his journey. 
But he fell among thieves, who stripped him and left him 
half dead, and the priest and the Levite passed him by. 
These two men represent a large class of people. We can 
imagine the priest asking himself, " Am I my brother's 
keeper ? " and complaining, " What did he want to go down 
there for any way ? Why didn't he stay at home ? He was 
a great deal better off in Jerusalem — he might have known 
something would happen to him." Some people think they 
have done their duty when they blame the poor for their 
poverty, and the unfortunate for the accidents which hap- 
pen to them. 

There is another class who always begin to philosophize 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 473 

the minute they see any suffering. " Why does God have 
these things ? Why does He have sin and poverty in the 
world, I would like to know ? He needn't have it ; He 
could just as well have made a world without it." But 
here comes the good Samaritan ; he does more than pity 
and philosophize ; he helps, gives oil, and lifts the poor fel- 
low on his beast. He is not afraid to touch him. He don't 
stop to ask whether he is Jew or Gentile, or just what he is 
going to do with the man if he takes him away from there. 
Now a great many people ask us, " What are you going to 
do with these young converts when you get them ? Where 
will you put them — into what church — Methodist, Baptist, 
Episcopal ? " " Well, we don't know ; we have not thought 
of that ; we are trying to get them out of the ditch first." 
" Oh, well then, we don't want to have anything to do with 
it ; we want it to be done decently and in order if we are 
going to have a hand in it." 

These people are no Samaritans ; they won't have any- 
thing to do with the poor fellows by the wayside if they 
cannot dispose of them ever afterwards to suit themselves. 
Let us not condemn those who have fallen into the ditch. 
Christ is our Good Samaritan ; He has done for us, and 
tells us to do for others. 



Create a clean heart in me, O God ! — Ps. li. 10. — It 

seems as if here is where we might well stop and say a 
word. Is our heart clean in the sight of God ? Has He 
renewed a right spirit within us ? Do we show that in our 
home, in our daily life, in our business, and in our contact 
with others ? If we do not, it seems to me it is better to 
be praying for ourselves than for others, that the world 
may see that we have been with God's Spirit. If we are 
a great way from Christ in all our ways, our words will be 
cold and empty, and we cannot reach the world. There is 



474 



GLAD TIDINGS. 



power enough in this room to move all New York if we 
had the right spirit and clean hearts. A friend of mine 
told me he had been preaching some time without seeing 
any results in his church, and he began to cry to God that 
he might have a blessing in his church. He said weeks 
went on and the answer didn't come, and he felt as if he 
must either have a blessing or give up the ministry. He 
must have souls or die, and he said that on one Sunday he 
threw himself on his knees in his study and cried to God : 
" Oh ! God, break this heart of mine and give me a con- 
trite spirit." Just at this moment he heard a faint rap at 
the door, and opening it, his little child, four years old, en- 
tered. She had heard her father's prayer, and she said, 
" Father, I wish you would pray for me, I want a clean 
heart." " And," said he, " God broke my heart, and at 
the next meeting there were forty inquirers, after that one 
sermon. " Oh, that our hearts may be tender, and may we 
know what it is to have broken hearts and contrite spirits." 



God's power to save the drunkard. — Jer. xxxii. 
17 : — " Oh, Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven 
and the earth by Thy great power and stretched-out arm, and 
there is nothing too hard for Thee." Mr. Moody said he 
had taken that chapter to every place where he had been. 
He had tried to find a substitute, but had never succeeded. 
He then said : 

It's just what we want to give the keynote to our meet- 
ings. Many of us look about and see so many wretched 
and wicked people that we become disheartened. But it's 
as easy for God to save every drunkard and infidel in New 
York as it is for Him to turn His hand over. Think of 
this earth that God has made, with its mountains and 
rivers ! Some one has said it is only a ball thrown from 
the hand of God, and another that the stars and the moon 



PR A YER MEE TING TALKS. 47 5 

are only the fringe of his garments. If God can do these 
great things, think you he can't save drunkards ? If He 
could speak worlds into existence, can't he save dead souls ? 
I have more hope of these prayer meetings than of any 
others. But if we don't get a hold of God here we won't 
anywhere. I believe that God answers prayers. If we 
ask a fish, He won't give us a stone. Some have said these 
meetings will pass away and do no good. But it won't be 
so if God is with us. The late war taught men how to 
pray. It seems to me that some of the best work I ever 
saw was among the soldiers. Those boys away from their 
mothers, how many prayers were uttered for them, and 
how many were converted ! I well remember a young lieu- 
tenant from Indiana. In one of our meetings, when we 
had been speaking of mothers' prayers, he got up and said 
the remarks reminded him of letters he had received from 
his mother, expressing great anxiety about his soul. He 
had told her he would come to Christ after the war ; but 
she reminded him he might never see that time. Another 
letter came from his home, and that mother was dead. And 
with the tears trickling down his cheeks, that noble young 
man told his tale, and came to know his Saviour. Now we 
come to-day to call upon the Lord for a great blessing to 
rest upon this mighty city. 

A rainy day prayer meeting. — Ps. ciii. — There are 
five precious clauses in this Psalm, viz : " He forgiveth all 
thine iniquities ; " " He healeth all thy diseases ; " " He 
redeemeth thy life from destruction," and " He crowneth 
thee with loving kindness." Christianity is better than 
anything that the world can give. It satisfies us. This is 
what wealth cannot do. The crowns of Europe cannot 
give the peace and contentment that come from the Crown 
of Life. I like these rainy day prayer meetings. It costs 
us something to get here. 



476 GLAD TIDINGS. 

How to Pray. — ii. Chron. iv. — God heard their 
voice in those days, and He will hear ours now if we make 
them in the right spirit. One reason why so many prayers 
go unanswered is that they are not in accordance with the 
will of God, or because we have not been sufficiently 
cleansed from our sins. Some secret sin maybe clustering 
around our hearts which He wants removed first. John in 
his gospel tells us that it is the comfort that if we ask any- 
thing according to His will it will be received. But some 
will say, " Well, how am I to know what is the will of 
God ? " Just turn to Romans viii., 6 : " Likewise the 
Spirit also helpeth our infirmities : for we know not what 
we should pray for as we ought ; but the Spirit itself 
maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be 
uttered." This leads us into Luke xi., i : " And it came to 
pass that one of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us 
how to pray as John also taught his disciples." I have no 
doubt many persons here have said, " Lord, teach me how 
to pray." I'd rather be able to pray like Daniel than to 
preach like David. The world knows little of the works 
wrought by prayer. But our words at the best seem empty 
and cold. Christ replied to the disciple, " When ye pray, 
say, Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy 
name." Later he says. " Ask and it shall be given you." ' 
In this ninth verse we find three classes of Christians 
mentioned — the asking, the seeking, and the knocking 
Christians. There are a good many in the first class. 
They are continually asking but do not seek. If you will 
allow me the expression, they run away from the mercy- 
seat before God r.as had time to answer them. Then there 
are the seeking Christians, who are a step in advance. 
They always try to find out what God wants them to do, 
and where the trouble lies within themselves. There is 
not a Christian on the face of the earth who, if he enters 
upon this self-examination, but will find that when his 



PR A YER MEETING TALKS. 477 

prayers are not answered there is something in his own 
heart which he cherishes but should give up. Lastly we 
have the knocking Christians. This is the class we want 
here. If you knock " it shall be opened," and keep 
knocking until it is. When the Holy Ghost is upon us, 
how every one longs to speak and to work for God ! Let 
us ask for great things — that God may fill us with the Holy 
Spirit, and we may learn to do His will. 

We don't know how to pray. Unless the Spirit of God 
be with us, we cannot expect that our prayers will be 
answered. Many are asking for what would be an injury 
to them should God grant it. God knows what we want 
better than we. He knows when anything would injure us, 
should we have it, and it is because He loves us that many 
prayers are unanswered. We sometimes fail to see why 
God withholds certain gifts, but later in life we will under- 
stand it. I well remember how I wanted many things some 
years ago, and can plainly see that they might have been 
a positive injury to me. It is well for us to make all our 
requests. Children ask many things of their parents, but 
the parent does not always grant their requests. We love 
them too well to give what would harm them. So it is with 
God and our prayers. I want to call your attention to the 
third chapter of Deuteronomy, where prayers were uttered 
which were not answered. Moses wanted to cross the 
Jordan. He was praying for himself. It was no sign God 
did not love him because He did not answer that prayer. 
He loved Moses as he did no other man of that time. He 
took him up to a mountain, let him die as it were on 
His breast and then buried him. After fifteen hundred 
years that prayer was answered. He was over Jordan 
on the mountain with Elias. And there was Elijah, 
who prayed that he might die. He was the only man 
living, I guess, who ever prayed for death. But wasn't it 
better for Elijah to go to heaven in that chariot of fire ? 



478 GLAD TIDINGS. 

Yes. God loved him too much to let him die. It is a 
good deal better to let God choose than to choose our- 
selves. 



Confessing our Sins. Daniel ix. It is when we 
confess our sins that we have power within. It was when 
Abraham was down in the dust that God talked with him* 
When we have not confessed our own sins it is no time to 
urge others to come to Christ. Should we attempt it, they 
might say to us, " Physician, heal thyself. Get the beam 
out of thine own eye." If a man is irritable in his own 
house, and fails to manifest the doctrine of Christ in his 
own life, it is useless for him to talk with others. It will 
help us, as workers in God's vineyard, if we drop the 
" you " in our conversation, and say " we." There is 
power enough in this hall to move all New York, if we only 
were aroused to the work, and were all right in our own 
hearts. There may be some secret sin lurking around our 
hearts which we need to get rid of. There is no room for 
pride, self, and worldliness in the hearts of those who are 
filled with the spirit. It isn't preaching that we want. You've 
had preaching enough to convert all New York, and it's 
good preaching. You have intellectual power in your 
pulpits — perhaps you never had more. But what you all 
need is the power of prayer. We must confess to God, for 
we are sinners against Him. It's not to man that we 
must confess. We haven't sinned against him. I know of 
only one instance mentioned in the Bible where a man 
. confessed his sins to men, and that was Judas, and he went 
out and hanged himself. O, let us have more of the spirit, 
of confession in our prayers. A man often wonders why his 
prayer isn't answered, and asks, " Hasn't God said that 
whatever we ask for we shall receive ? " Yes, God has said 
this, but there are conditions under which He will grant 






PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 



479 



our requests. One is that we should forgive others, as we 
would have God forgive us. If there is a soul on the face 
of the earth that you can't forgive, there is no use of pray- 
ing. Your prayers will be mere mummeries. But we 
must follow the words of Christ : " If ye abide in me." 
Then, again, we must have faith. Christ tells us how we 
can move mountains, if we have faith. And the last con- 
dition I would mention is that men ought always to pray, 
and never to faint ; earnest and continued supplications 
bring the blessings. 



Disobedience. — All the trouble in the world origin- 
ates in this little word. It is the cause of all misery, and 
is the open door through which it comes. It was there 
that Adam fell ; God told him that he shouldn't do a cer- 
tain thing, and he did it. In the 15th chapter of First 
Samuel we read of sacrifices and obedience, and that God 
prefers being obeyed to having any sacrifice offered that 
men may choose. The first thing that God wants is 
obedience. That's what we want in our families. If our 
children disobey us there comes an alternative. They 
must learn to obey, or they or we must leave the house. 
It is the same with the Kingdom of God. If we enter it 
we must obey. To obey is better than making sacrifice. 
Saul lost his crown, his throne, his son, his friend Samuel, 
and the friendship of his son-in-law David ; he turned his 
back on them all because of his disobedience, and he 
finally lost his life. But just turn to that other Saul over 
in the New Testament. He was obedient unto death. 
He had no Jonathan, save at the right hand of God. He 
had no crown, no throne, but he won them both. A bless- 
ing is promised all who will obey. God deals with individ~ 
uals as with nations. The punishment is the same. Pun- 
ishment comes alike upon families and individuals if they 



4 8o CLAD TIDINGS. 

will not obey. A crisis may come when we do not know 
whether to obey God or our employers or possibly our 
parents. The Word of God makes the way clear. When 
we come into God's Kingdom, "whatsoever He saith to 
thee, do it." If the laws of the nation are in conflict with 
God's law, they must be broken. Christ alone of all men 
obeyed God fully. Obey Him and then God may look 
down pleased with His children, and say, " This is my son, 
this is my daughter." Christ came to do God's will. 
When men disobey army orders they are court-martialed 
and shot. No one complains. Now, my friends, is there 
not as much reason why we should obey the orders of 
Heaven, and, when we do not, should we not be punished ? 
Sinners are willing to do anything but obey God. Coming 
to Him as a poor beggar is what they don't like. If they 
could buy salvation they would gladly do it. Some men 
down in Wall-street, I fancy, would pay great prices. Many 
people come to me and say, " Mr. Moody, is it right for 
me to go to the theatre ; can I dance ? " That ain't it. 
Can we glorify God by doing such things ? It's a good 
deal better to be right with God, and then He will look 
down with pleasure and bless us. 



Hope. — If I should question every one here to-day I 
have no doubt each would be found with a hope. But is 
it a true or a false hope ! If it is false it is worse than 
none. Job speaks about ihe hypocrite, and says : " Will 
God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him." Solo- 
mon says in Proverbs that " the hope of the unjust man 
shall perish." If you have false hopes of heaven, the best 
thing you can do is to give them up. For what are they 
good for ? Will they bear you over Jordan ? Will they 
sustain you beyond the grave ? But true hope is not in re- 
gard to eternal life. That is secured to us if we are born 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 481 

of God. Our hopes are of the resurrection of Christ, His 
second coming and our own resurrection. It is written, 
" He that believeth hath eternal life." The Lord himself 
shall descend from heaven, the dead shall be raised, and 
we shall meet Him in the air. It is a glorious hope. All 
that believe shall rise. That is a hope sure and steadfast. 
Some one says that joy is like a lark that sings in the 
morning, but hope is like a nightingale that sings in the 
night. We won't need hope after we get to heaven. But 
it takes us there. You can have Christ and this hope to- 
day if you will. " He came to His own and His own re- 
ceived Him not, but as many as received Him to them 
gave He power." 



Come. — Matt. xi. — " Come, unto me all ye that labor 
and are heavy lade?i, and I will give you rest" He said : 

We here find an invitation to come to Christ. He says, 
" Come unto me all." I like that word " all," because every 
one is included in it. The question that comes home to us 
all is, Shall we come ? Some people go to Christ with 
their good deeds, pure desires, good thoughts and good 
name. But that isn't what Christ wants. He alone wants 
the sins of men. They are all that He Himself hasn't got, 
and He wants them. The moment we are willing to come 
to Him with our sins He will receive us. He will forgive 
and heal whoever brings his soul to Him. God dealeth 
with us as we deal with our children. If your child does 
wrong, if he tells a lie, you want him to confess, and begin 
to talk with him. He may tell you he is the best scholar 
in his class, that he is obedient, and that he loves you. 
But that ain't what you want. You want him to confess 
that he has told a lie. So let us learn to come before the 
Saviour and confess our sins, laying them at the feet of 
Jesus. But by what right can we respond to this invita- 

3i 



482 . GLAD TIDINGS. 

tion ? Suppose the Mayor of New York should invite all 
the Smiths to a banquet, and Mr. Sankey should go and 
try to get in on the plea that he was a singer. Or suppose 
a man should go whose name was Jones and who was a 
good scientist. Do you suppose they could get in when 
their names were not Smith ? Now, if you can prove that 
you are a sinner, this invitation from Christ applies to you. 
Don't try to prove your worthiness but your unworthiness. 
If you want rest come to Christ. It can't be obtained in 
the world. You can't buy it ; your friends can't give it to 
you ; God don't call you without giving you the means of 
winning it ; you can come if you will. O, may God give 
you the power to-day. 



Fruits of the Spirit. — Gal. v. 27. — Love is the first 
fruit. If we don't love our enemies we're not converted. 
We must be able to forgive others before God will forgive 
us. There is no grace in loving our friends and those who 
love us. The greatest heathen would do that. But joy is 
what we want to talk about to-day. No man is converted 
who hasn't it. The angels said, " I bring you good tidings 
of great joy." The world may give happiness, but it is 
fleeting. It may vanish in a day. But joy comes from 
heaven ; it is a river, and flows on forever from the throne. 
Some people say they once had this joy, but have it not 
now. Let them turn over to the words, " Restore to me 
the joy of Thy Salvation." He will do it. But remember 
the words, " Study the Word and work." A man may work 
and still not have joy, and he may study the Bible and not 
have it. He must work and study both. Then it will 
come, " The joy of the Lord is your strength." If you 
have joy in your heart you can't help but work. Your 
strength will not fail you. 

There are three kinds of joy. First is the joy of our 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 



483 



own salvation. How well we remember the day when we 
found the Lord ! " Happy day " — how we liked to sing 
that hymn ! Then there is the joy of seeing others con- 
verted. I pity those who keep out of the inquiry room. 
We who are in there get the cream of this work ; while 
you, if I may be allowed the expression, only get the skim- 
med milk. And a third kind of joy is thaf which comes 
from seeing others walk in God's ways. In John xv., nth 
verse, Christ says, " These things have I spoken unto you, 
that My joy might remain with you and our joy might be 
full." That was better than if He had left us silver and 
gold. That's His legacy, His will. Yes, " My joy I leave 
with you " and thank God the devil can't get hold of it ; 
the world can't take it away. How easy it is to save souls 
when you have joy in your heart. The world sees it in our 
faces. Last night we had the most extraordinary meeting 
that has been held. It was the grandest impression I have 
had in New York, to see those young men standing up. 
Ah, the joy of Christ was on their faces. 



What is it to believe on Christ ? — John iv. n, 12. — 
If Christ was not divine, He was not a Saviour, and we 
are man-worshippers ; all our hopes are gone, and our faith 
is vain. Matthew wrote to prove that Christ is the true 
Messiah, the Son of David. Mark begins with Malachi, 
where the Old Testament leaves off. Luke begins with 
Zachariah. But John sweeps over them all, and goes back 
to the bosom of God, and brings Christ from the throne. 
The nth and 12th verses of the fourth chapter of John 
are to me two of the most precious in the Bible. They 
are about worn out in my Bible with use : "And He came 
unto His own, and His own received Him not ; but unto 
such as believed on Him, to them gave He power" Mark 
the " Him." There is no creed, no denomination, no 



484 



GLAD 1 WINGS. 



system required. There is not a soul here but can take 
Him to-day if it will. "Whomsoever" has been said, and 
it means all mankind. We have the best reasons to be- 
lieve that this religion is true. How could hundreds of 
thousands of Christians have found so much comfort in 
Christ if it were all a myth ? See how men have been 
elevated and lifted up. Let us only take God at His word 
and we will be saved. 

Last night in the young men's meeting, a young man 
stood up and told how he had been saved three years ago ; 
how his mother and sisters had all given him up, and the 
Lord reached down and lifted him into life. Isn't this 
proof of the Lord's power ? All who find Christ tell the 
same story, be they Americans, English, Germans,Chinese, 
or of other nationality. What more proof do you want 
than this, and the ages that this religion has been a Gospel 
of peace and joy to thousands of suffering souls. There 
is much discussion now-a-days about miracles. But isn't 
a conversion a miracle ? John's Gospel is the great one. 
Believe, believe, believe, he says. That idea is ever before 
him. Every chapter but two in his writings mentions it. 
God don't tell you to feel ; many say they don't feel right 
to come to Christ. God tells you to believe. You must 
trust Him first. You must have faith in Him before you 
can have Christian experience. " Though He slay me, yet 
will I trust Him ; " that's it. If He don't save us who can ? 
All the churches and priests in the world can't do it. Now 
let us pray that all the unbelief in this building may be 
swept away. 



Praise. — We have a blessed subject to-day — " Praise." 
I think this is the first praise meeting we have had. We 
have been praying a great deal, and now let us praise God. 
There is much more said in the Bible about praise than 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 485 

about prayer. The Psalms are nothing but praise, and as 
David got nearer the end of his journey he seems to have 
thought of little else. So it is with Christians — the nearer 
they get to heaven the more they praise God. The saints 
praise Him in heaven, and men should learn how to praise 
Him here below. Everything that God has created except 
the heart of man, praises Him. The sun, moon, and stars 
praise Him, and O, let us praise Him. " Praise the Lord, 
O my soul,'* says the Psalmist. I knew a man who always 
used to praise God under any circumstances. One day he 
came in with a severe cut on his finger, and said, " I have 
cut my finger. Praise God ! I didn't cut it off." Under 
all circumstances let us praise God that our misfortunes 
are no worse. Let us ask Him to help us to praise Him. 
If we only had more of these praise-meetings, I think it 
wouldn't be long before a glorious revival would sweep 
through all the churches. Forget your troubles, and begin 
to praise God to-day. 



Christ Mighty to Save. — The key-note of this 
meeting is the sentiment of that hymn — " Christ mighty to 
save." I have had considerable experience with men 
enslaved by strong drink. They try often to reform, but 
seldom succeed alone. The reason is that they have too 
much confidence in their own strength. When they give 
that up, and learn to trust alone in Christ, they are saved. 
When they call on God for help, they always get it. If we 
could only save ourselves by our own strength there would 
be no need of a Saviour. The Corst enemy man has is 
himself. His pride and self-confidence often ruin him. 
They keep him from trusting to the arms of a loving 
Saviour. We are wicked by our nature ; there is nothing 
good in us ; the Bible teaches us that all the way through. 
David in the Psalms said : " There is none that doeth 



486 GLAD TIDINGS. 

good ; no, not one." He was right. We are all evil in 
our nature. It is the old Adam. I tell you man without 
God is a failure, and a tremendous failure. There's nothing 
good in him. It is a great deal better to believe God than 
to hope for salvation through your own poor exertions. 
How many times have you resolved to break off from some 
habit and failed ! The heart is deceitful and desperately 
wicked. What we want is a new creation. Don't try to 
patch up your old natures. We want to be regenerated. 
Last Friday we had some men here from Philadelphia, and 
they did much good. Some have said, " Oh, they won't 
hold out." But we have some other friends here to-day. 
Let them testify. 



Promises of the Bible. — There was a man in London 
who had all the promises of God printed together in a little 
book, and some time after some one in the country sent 
up for a copy. He received the answer that all the prom- 
ises of God were out of print — perhaps that man had never 
heard of this : (holding up a Bible). At one time in Chi- 
cago, when the meetings grew a little dull, I told them we 
would go through the Bible and look for all the promises 
given us ; and from that time there were no more dull 
meetings. We had never realized before what promises 
God has made to those who believe in Jesus Christ. In 
the West I met a man in the cars who was marking a lot 
of notes he had in his hand with the letters B., G., P., and 
so on, and I asked him what it was for. He said some of 
them were bad, the parties were bankrupt, and he never 
expected to collect them. Some were good, though the 
men were slow to pay, and some were only possibly good, 
and he marked them to calculate his chances. Now some 
people are just like this with God's promises ; some they 
expect will be kept, and some they do not ; some are 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 487 

barely possible. I advise you to make all God's promises 
good. God always keeps every promise He makes, and I 
defy any infidel to show any promise he has not kept. 

Peace. — Num.vi. 26. — The Gospel is a Gospel of peace, 
and our God is a God of peace, not of contention. The 
wicked know nothing of peace. There is no peace saith 
the Lord, for the wicked ; they are like the troubled sea — 
but you don't need to go to the Bible to find that out ; if 
you will look around you, you will see it. If you have not 
got peace, it is a sure sign you have not found the true 
God, for the peace of God will keep your hearts and minds 
if you have found Him. Look in the 6th chapter of Num- 
bers, 26th verse : ' The Lord lift up His countenance upo?i 
thee, and give thee peace' The Lord will keep thee; the 
Lord will give thee peace ; the Lord will bless thee — bless- 
ing at the foundation, blessing on the top, peace in the 
middle, solid, real peace such as the world cannot give or 
take away. When a man has left a will, how eagerly we 
read it ! We don't care much for a dry law paper, but if 
it has got our name in it with a legacy we never find it 
dry. Now God says, ' My peace I leave with you.' Oh, 
child of God, have you got it ? None of us have enough of 
it. I get angry and disturbed and make a fool of myself 
very often ; I wish I had peace enough to keep me from 
it, but God gives good measure, shaken up, pressed down, 
full measure. Let our hearts be open to receive the peace 
of God." 



Affliction. — You will find in the 119th Psalm, 67th 
verse, these words : " Befoi-e I was afflicted I went astray ; 
but now have I kept Thy word /" and again, in the 71st 
verse : u It is good for me that 1 have been afflicted, that I 
might lear-n Thy statutes" We can stand affliction better 
than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God. 



488 GLAD TIDINGS. 

When our work is light, our prospects good, and every- 
thing looks smooth and easy, we are more apt to give our- 
selves over to pleasure. Somebody said : " It is the dead 
level of affairs that makes us go to ruin." A great many 
have a wrong idea of God, and think he sends afflictions 
because He don't love them ; they think that because they 
don't know Him. He sends afflictions to humble our 
hearts and make us look to Him, and because He loves 
us, so he cannot let us leave Him and forget Him. Mr. 
Moody read a letter from a young lady in London, who 
would not go to the meetings when he was there for fear 
she might be converted, but who, since then, had been 
brought to God through suffering. 



Christ, versus Peter. — There is no day in the week 
when I feel my weakness so much as on Friday. We can 
do nothing. If these men get liberty, it is by the power of 
God. If you will turn to the third chapter of Acts, you 
will read the story of the- lame man whom Peter restored, 
and who followed him into the temple. When the people 
saw it they ran together greatly wondering, and probably 
when John saw this he said to Peter, ' Now, Peter, would be 
a good time for you to preach. And Peter said, l Ye men 
of Israel, why marvel ye at this ? or why look ye so earnest- 
ly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had 
made this man to walk ? It was faith in God's name which 
made this man strong, whom ye see and know.' The 
man had been blind from his birth, but he walked around, 
crying and shaking himself in the temple. If we had seen 
him, we would have thought he was a shouting Methodist 
with his hallelujahs and amens. It was by Christ's power, 
not by his own, that Peter did this thing. So it is with us. 
Many ask : ' Can these drunkards be saved ? ' I tell you 
only by Christ ; if God gives them power they will be 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 489 

saved. We are living in the days of miracles now. These 
intemperate men are only converted by a miracle. They 
may be overtaken by a fault, but if they are, let us go and 
help them up again ; it is no sign they have not been con- 
verted because their faults overtake them afterward ; it is 
so with all of us. What we do must be done in Christ's 
name. We might as well have an icicle in the pulpit as a 
man who leaves Christ out. Tons of such mere intellec- 
tual sermons do no good. If these men will get Christ 
they can resist temptation ; otherwise they cannot. 

Belief in God. — 11 Kings, 7. — I have believed in God 
for thirty years. When first converted I did not believe in 
Him very much, but ever since then I have believed in Him, 
more and more every year. When people come to me, tell 
me they can't believe, and ask what they shall do, I tell 
them to do as I once knew a man do. He went and knelt 
down and told God honestly he could not believe in Him. 
and I advise them to go off alone and tell it right out to 
the Lord. But if you stop to ask yourself why you don't 
believe in Him, is there really any reason ? People read 
infidel books and wonder why they are unbelievers, I ask 
why they read such books. They think they must read 
both sides. I say that book is a lie, how can it be one side 
when it is a lie ? It is not one side at all. Suppose a man 
tells right down lies about my family, and I read them so 
as to hear both sides ; it would not be long before some 
suspicion would creep into my mind. I said to a man once, 
" Have you got a wife ? " "Yes, and a good one." I asked : 
" Now what if I should come to you and cast out insinua- 
tions against her ? " And he said, " Well your life would 
not be safe long if you did." I told him just to treat the 
devil as he would treat a man who went round with such 
stories. We are not to blame for having doubts flitting 
through our minds, but for harboring them. Let us go out 
trusting the Lord with heart and soul to-day. 



49 o GLAD TIDINGS. 

He came to save sinners. — They that are whole 
need not a physician, but they that are sick. I come not 
to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." 

In his short address he said : Matthew, Mark, and Luke 
all gave an account of this sayings of Christ's, that He came 
to save sinners. Sin may keep us out of heaven, but can- 
not keep us from coming to Christ. Christ was a physi- 
cian ; He came to save sinners, and He never lost a case 
that was brought to him. If you should call a physician 
to see a friend and he should go and find that man was 
perfectly well, he would be indignant, wouldn't he ? I re- 
member when I was in Chicago, seeing the advertisement 
of a patent medicine stuck all round on houses and rocks 
and fences. " Pain Killer ! Pain Killer i Pain Killer ! " and 
I thought, " there is a man who is bound to make some 
money." I hadn't any pain I wanted cured, so I did not 
pay much attention to it. But one morning when Spring 
came I had a headache, and when I saw that this Pain 
Killer would cure headache I bought a bottle. Men don't 
want a doctor until they are sick, and don't go to Christ 
until they feel their need of Him. It is no use to offer 
bread to a man who is not hungry, or water to a man who 
is not thirsty. " They that are whole need not a physician, 
but they that are sick." Paul said he was the chief of sin- 
ners, and if the chief is saved, there is hope for every sin- 
ner. 



Joseph of Arimathea. — What I want to call atten- 
tion to this morning is how one act done for Christ, with a 
pure motive, will live forever. All four of the disciples 
give an account of this deed. Joseph of Arimathea, was a 
rich man and a counsellor, a good and just man, and John 
tells us he had long been a secret disciple of Christ. He 
had never come out boldly for fear of the Jews, but in that 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 49I 

hour, when all had deserted Him and one had betrayed 
Him, the death of Christ brought Joseph out, and he alone 
came forward to care for the crucified body. It is the 
death of Christ which should enlist us all. The fact that 
He died for us should make us all come forward to advance 
His kingdom. Joseph had been opposed to the death of 
Jesus, but he had taken no part in His trial and crucifixion. 
Dr. Bonner says, When you have a trial before a commit- 
tee and one of its members will oppose the measure you 
want to carry you don't send for him — you have the meet- 
ing without him if you can. So when this matter came up 
before the Sanhedrim, Joseph was not there and was not 
sent for. It is only when Christ is dead *upon the cross 
that Joseph comes forward as a disciple and begs the body 
of Pilate — an act which has lived nearly one thousand nine 
hundred years, and which will continue to live throughout 
all time. Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not tell us where 
Joseph got the myrrh and aloes, but John tells us that 
Nicodemus brought a hundred pounds weight, and that 
they put linen clothes upon the body of Jesus, with the 
spices, and laid it in a new sepulchre wherein was never 
man yet laid. It was a tomb Joseph had built for himself, 
expecting to lie there some day, but he probably thought 
the sepulchre would be all the sweeter if Christ had laid 
there. 

When we go away from here, let us see what we can do 
for the sake of Jesus, what acts that deserve to live. 



Losing Sight of Self. — Mr. Moody read the 
9th chapter of Mark. He said : There is no doubt 
but hundreds of Christians who have attended these meet- 
ings wonder how they can now go out and work for the 
Lord. There is one thing necessary first, and that is, we 
must lose ourselves and think only of duty. In this chap- 



492 GLAD TIDINGS. 

ter which I have just read, we learn how the disciples had 
disputed among themselves who should be the greatest ; 
but Christ said to them, " If any man desire to be first, the 
same shall be last of all and servant of all." If a man 
wants to become wise before God, he must be willing to 
appear a fool before the world. God don't want our wis- 
dom : He wants our ignorance. We read in the ioth 
chapter of Mark and 31st verse, " But many that, are first 
shall be last, and the last first." Then Jesus tells of seven 
things that are going to happen in reference to His death. 
" The Son of Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, 
and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver 
Him to the Gentiles ; and they shall mock Him, and shall 
scourge Him, and shall spit upon Him, and shall kill Him, 
and the third day He shall rise again." This was a 
prophecy, and I have an idea that many things which we 
still think are visionary will literally take place at some 
remote time. Yet right after this prophecy the disciples 
said to Him, " Master, we would that Thou shouldst do for 
us whatsoever we shall desire." Here is self again, and 
always self. It was the dying request of Christ that we 
should eat of the bread and drink of the wine in remem- 
brance of Him ■ yet many young converts say to me, " I 
need not go to the Communion table, need I ? " I tell 
them they need not go unless they want to, but if that was 
the dying request of any friend they had they would be 
willing to do it all their lives ; why, then, should they not 
desire to do it in remembrance of their Saviour? They 
never thought of it in that way, they say. We want to be 
remembered in heaven, and Christ wants to be remembered 
here. We must pray to God to fill us with this spirit, and 
help us get rid of self ; and never let us stop and try to 
think who shall be greatest. 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 493 

True Friendship. — We read in thexv. chapter of u. 
Samuel that David was fleeing in exile from Jerusalem. 
Absalom had already undermined his power and super- 
seded him on the throne. But as David went through the 
gate six hundred men passed on before him, and the king 
said to Ittai, the leader : " Wherefore goest thou also 
with us ; return to thy place and abide with the king, for 
thou art a stranger and also an exile." And Ittai an- 
swered the king and said, " As the Lord liveth, and as my 
lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king 
shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy 
servant be." There was another man, too, called Hushai, 
who went out to meet the king, but he returned again to 
the city. How it must have pleased David to have found 
Ittai outside the gate. Ittai is worth thousands of Hush- 
ais. David did not know who his friends were until trouble 
came. There was true fellowship, true love in that act. 
In time of distress Ittai would not desert his king, but fol- 
lowed him into exile. So it should be in the church. That 
is just what Christ looks for ; the only thing which can 
please Him is the true love that will leave all to follow 
Him. Some people do not know the meaning of the word 
fellowship — it means partnership. Our partnership is with 
Christ the Son, and when we come into it everything we 
have belongs to the firm ; we can do nothing by ourselves 
without consulting Christ. We must be like Ittai, willing to 
leave the city and all we possess, if necessary, to follow him. 



Our Refuge. — I want to call your attention to the six 
cities of refuge appointed by Joshua for the children of 
Israel. These cities were set apart that all men who 
killed any person unawares or unwittingly, and without 
hatred, might flee to them and be safe within their gates. 
The magistrates had to see to it that guide-boards were put 



494 GLAD TIDINGS. 

up, stones cleared away, and the roads kept clear for those 
who fled for their lives from the avengers of blood. These 
ancient cities of refuge are in our day represented by 
Christ. He is our refuge in all times of trouble. 

The names of the cities are Hebrew, and all have 
a meaning. Kedish means holiness. If we flee to this 
city of refuge we will be made holy. Had Christ commit- 
ted sin we could have no hope, but since He is without 
sin, if we are in Christ we are made perfect. Shechem 
meant shoulder, which means strength and power. If a 
man needs strength he must flee there. Sins are in one of 
two places, on us or on Christ. If we are weak we must 
find strength in Shechem. Hebron means joined. If we 
can get there we are joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Beser 
means fortified ; you are secured there if you want to get 
away from the world. Ramoth means heights and Golan 
means exile — exile in this world and citizenship in heaven. 
These six cities ought to be a help to you. Have we 
Christ for our refuge ? If a man is away from God what 
hope has he ? It is folly for a man who has an appetite 
for drink to try and overcome it by himself ; he can't 
overcome both his appetite and the devil alone. It is only 
through Christ that we can be secure. 



The Holy Spirit. — If we have the Spirit, we have 
the fruit of the Spirit. If the Spirit of God is in us, we 
will have these qualities of His Spirit. " He that loveth 
not, knoweth not God ; for God is love." Some one said 
to me the other day that he understood about belief, but 
could not understand what it was to be born again. I told 
him that he that believed had life eternal, and whoever re- 
ceived life through Christ was born again. A man cannot 
get that life by merely going to church and observing 
forms ; he must get the Spirit of God, and then he will 



I 



PR A YER MEETING TALKS. 495 

have light and peace. We have no peace so long as we 
have sin, but if we accept Christ, and salvation through 
Him, our sins are blotted out, and we have peace in re- 
viewing the past. Spiritual power is what we want next. 
As soon as the Holy Ghost comes we want boldness to 
go out and proclaim Jesus. There was once a man on 
trial for his life. The king of the country in which he 
lived said the law must take its course, but, after he was 
tried and condemned, he would pardon him. The man 
was cool all through his trial, and when they brought in a 
verdict of guilty, the man was perfectly unconcerned. So 
with the Christian. He will have boldness in his heart on 
the day of judgment, because he knows Christ became a 
propitiation for his sins and he has his pardon laid up in 
his heart. 



One thing thou lackest. — The thought I want to 
call your attention to is, that here is a man who seems to 
be good enough without Christ. Cornelius, we are told, 
was devout, just, benevolent, of good report among all na- 
tions, and a man who feared God. What more could you 
ask ? What did he lack ? He needed Christ. I don't 
care how good a man may be he needs a Saviour. We 
ought to be interested in this account of the conversion of 
Cornelius, for if he needed it, we all need it, every man in 
New York needs it. It is recorded that an angel of God 
appeared to Cornelius and told him to send to Joppa for 
Peter that he might come to his house and tell them words 
whereby they might be saved. And Cornelius sent three 
men and Peter returned with them to Cesarea. We all 
ought to want to know what the message was that the dis- 
ciple brought. What was necessary for the salvation of so 
good a man is necessary for us all. Here in this chapter 
we have it all. Peter taught everywhere Christ. And in 



496 GLAD TIDINGS. 

the 38th verse we read, " How God anointed Jesus of Naz- 
areth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about 
doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the 
devil, for God was with him." You may be everything that 
is estimable, but if you don't believe in Jesus Christ and 
receive remission of your sins, you cannot see heaven. Un- 
der that preaching of Peter's, Cornelius and his whole fam- 
ily were converted. The Holy Ghost fell upon the meet- 
ing, and it was a good net that the disciple drew in that 
day. Let us pray that we may receive the Spirit as they 
did. 



Three Classes. — I always notice many here at noon 
whom we have met in the inquiry-rooms, and I want to 
speak a word to them. There are three classes of people 
who will not accept salvation — those who neglect it, those 
who refuse it, and those who despise it. Many think they 
are not so bad as the scoffer at religion because they only 
neglect it, but if they keep on they are lost just the same. 
Suppose there is a man in a boat going in a swift current 
down the stream ; if he neglects to pull for the shore he is 
a doomed man. He will go over the rapids won't he ? If 
Noah had neglected to go into the ark after he had built 
it, he would have been lost with the other antediluvians. 
Nothing could have saved him. You let the cry be raised 
that this building was on fire, and see how many will 
keep their seats ; they would be burned up as sure as they 
did. 

Then again in the 12th chapter of Hebrews, 25th verse, 
" See that ye refuse not him that speaketh." The next 
step is to refuse salvation. A while ago they only neg- 
lected it, now they refuse it — that is the second round of 
the ladder. You can only do one of two things, take it or 
refuse it. You have all been in a house where the waiter 



PRAYER MEETING TALKS. 497 

passed ice-water to a number of people sitting together, 
and seen how some would take it and some would not ; so 
the cup of salvation is passed among you to-day. How 
many of you will accept it ? Are you almost persuaded ? 
Remember a hair's breadth from heaven is not an inch 
from hell. 

Again in the 10th chapter of Hebrews, 28th verse, we 
read : " He that despised Moses' law died without mercy 
under two or three witnesses." Many despise the whole 
thing, hate it, and will have none of it — give them a tract 
and they light their cigars with it. There are the three 
words — neglect, refuse, despise. When there is but one 
engine and three cars attached, don't they all go the same 
way ? If you do either of these three things, you must 
suffer the eternal consequences. 



Come. — The keynote for the services to-day is found 
in the little word Come. I would like to speak to you of 
seven instances where we are invited to come to the Lord. 
In the 55 th chapter of Isaiah and 1st verse we read, " Ho, 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters," and again 
in the 3d verse. " Incline your ear and come unto me ; hear 
and your soul shall live." I have great hopes that a man 
may be saved when he will stop and listen. People are so 
engrossed with the affairs of this world that but few find 
time to stop. It is all rush and hurry, and they don't think 
about their souls. I was out to dinner yesterday, and they 
were trying there to teach a little child to walk. They 
would say to her, " Come," and she would try to go a few 
steps. So Christ is calling the world to come, but the 
trouble is they do not heed and won't go. After the Chi- 
cago fire, when such quantities of money, clothes, and pro- 
visions were sent there, the only question asked those who 
applied for assistance was. " Were you burned out ? " If 

32 



498 GLAD TIDINGS. 

they could prove it. they got help. All you have to do is to 
show that you want help from God, and He will give it. In 
the i st of Isaiah we find : " Come now, and let us reason 
together, saith the Lord ; though your sins be as scarlet 
they shall be white as snow." Sin can keep us out of 
heaven, but not out of Christ. If you are out of Christ, 
decide now to come to Him. As the old colored woman 
said, when she made up her mind, then she was there. 
Will you turn to the 6th chapter of Mark and 31st verse ? 
Christ said to his disciples, " Come ye yourselves apart 
into a desert place, and rest a while." It is a good thing to 
be alone with God. We lead two lives — one in the world 
and one apart with God. In the nth chapter of Matthew 
is the invitation, " Come unto me all ye that labor." If 
any man or woman among you is carrying a burden, take it 
to Christ. In the last verse of the 4th chapter of Hebrews 
we are told to come boldly to the throne of grace. Those 
who are .afraid to. become Christians lest they can't hold 
out, should remember that at the Throne we can find grace 
in time of need. The next come is in the 2 2d chapter of 
Matthew and 4th verse : " Come unto the marriage " — the 
parable of the marriage of the king's son. The seventh and 
last invitation I want to call your attention to is, " Come 
and inherit eternal life." " Come up hither." These are 
blessed words, which will last forever. - 



INDEX 



TO 



ANECDOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



A. 



Abbreviate the service, 463 
Accounts, keeping short, 448 
Alexander and His Impecunious Gen- 
eral, 166 
American people asleep, 393 
Amusements, conscience in the choice 

of, 456 
Announce the subject, 465 
An anxious minister's success, 474 
An imperishable deed, 491 
An Army or an Orator, 15 
A Belfast Family Saved, 52 
Apple trees, the two, 413 
Assurance, 372 
Ark, urging mothers to enter the 

Spiritual, 351 
Archers, English, 414 
Ascension, picturing the, 433 
A practice in Scotland, 466 
Associates, seeking intelligent, 452 
Apostolic preaching, the key note of, 

426 
A Reason for Backsliding, 171 
A Run on the Bank of Heaven, 166 
A Neighborly Combination, 26 
A Scotchman's Surprise, 109 
A Tiresome Word, 55 
A Lighthouse, or Tallow Candle, 45 
A Cross on the Way to Heaven, 182 
Andrew's Reputation, 46 



B. 



Bankrupt Sinners, 82 
Baptism not Regeneration, 88 
Bartimeus Restored to Sight, 121 
Battle-field, illustration from the, 293 
Backsliders, God's love for, 244 
Beliefs, between two, 280 
Bells, no warning, in Eternity, 256 
Believing What the Church Be- 
lieves, 173 
Biography, your own, 410 



Bible, no substitute for the, 453 
Born again, to be, 494 
Bonner, Dr. saying of, 457 
Bonner, Saying of Dr., 323 
Boarders, distinguishing from the fam- 
ily, 278 
Broadway, penitent saved on, 420 
Brother, man kept from failure by his, 

449 
Bring the people together, 464 
Brother, little boy and his big, 449 
Bunyan's Saying, 77 
Business man in trouble, 320 
Business, young men waiting to be 

established in, 267 



Calvary, closing scene on, 300 
Censuring unfortunate people, 472 . 
Centurion's Faith and Humility, 134 
Children, curiosity of, 415 
Children, influence of family training 

upon, 351 
Chapter, a wonderful, 359 
Change methods, 461 
Christ first, Church afterwards, 473 
Children, the way to. hell made easy 

for, 443 
Christians, three classes of, 476 
Chicago fire, after the, 497 
Church, urging people to join the, 453 
Christ only, can save drunkards, 488 
Christianity, Personal, out of taste, 217 
Christians of the Tread-mill Type, 44 
Chosen, conceited men not, 291 
Church Drawing Outsiders, 56 
Cities of Refuge, 493 
Colored woman, and stone wall, 454 
Converts, a caution to, 458 
Contents of a will eagerly read, 487 • 
Communion Table, need of attend- 
ance at, 492 
College, God's, 374 
Complaint of two young men, 467 



INDEX. 



Complaining Letters, 64 
Confession without Restitution, 123 
Converts, predicting the failure of 

young, 446 
Conversion, evils of a spurious, 437 
Conversion, preparing for, 266 
Creeds, Christianity larger than, 439 
Criticizing the teaching of Mothers, 

241 
Children Singing in the flames, 270 
Congress, No room for Christ in, 217 
Church, the lack of the, 276 
Complaints, Cold Christians full of, 276 
Challenge, the Giant's, 308 
Christians, three classes of, 288 



Dangerous, Self-confidence, 447 
Denominations, the unity of, 445 
Deluge, vivid picture of the, 350 
Death better than perpetuated life, 361 
Decision, personal, 401 
Death of a procrastinator, 405 
" Dead level of Affairs," ruinous, 488 
Despising Moses' law, 497 
Dead Sea Saints, 46 
Despair, dying in, 260 
Distinction between physical and spirit- 
ual life, 356 
Difference between a saved and un- 
saved man, 421 
Dr. Arnold's Illustration, 166 
Difference between Law and Grace, 161 
Dying Miner, 147 
Drunkard's Home Near Hell, 94 
Devil at Church every Sunday, 87 
Dr. Arnot Paying a Woman's Rent, 80 
Devil's Castaways, 72 
Dr. Arnold and the Calf, 56 
Dining on a " Little Loaf," 47 
Dispatch Framed and Hung in 

Office, 136 
Dublin, Man burned to death in, 422 
Dying Soldier at Murfreesboro, 107 



E. 



Ecclesiastical Amputations, 55 

Edinburgh Infidel, 27 

Elijah Afraid of a Woman, 33 

Emma and Her Muff, 116 

Emperor of Russia freeing his Serfs, 

34i 
Enoch's unpopularity, 323 
Enthusiasm Needed, 36 
Enthusiasm at Princeton, 36 
Enthusiasm of a Young Chieftain, 38 
Evils of disobedience, 479 



Evil of self-confidence, 485 
Evangelistic services defined, 461 
Excitement disclaimed, 445 
Exile in Tears, an 151 

F. 

Family Won by a Smile, 57 
Father and Maniac Son, 197 
Father from India and Son, 28 
Father and Son reconciled, 236 
Father and Son Reconciled, 72 
Father, Son trampling upon a pros- 
trate, 246 
Faith Pleases Jesus, 24 
Fearing Expulsion from the Syna- 
gogue, 190 
Fireman Saving a Child, 41 
Fisherman, Jesus helping the, 432 
Flowers, Sick man and, 439 
Flag, safe under the, 332 
Flogged for being " among Angels," 50 
Forgiveness, God's method of express- 
ing, 250 
Four Enemies Overcome by the Gos- 
pel, 68 
Fruit, three kinds of, 438 
Fullness, illustration of Christ's, 289 
Funeral at Nain, 199 

G. 

Garibaldi's, Saying of yj 

Gideon's Army, 18 

Given up by Mother and Sister, 484 

God's Plan for Every Man, 43 

God's care for those who love Him, 329 

Going through the Roof to Jesus, 24 

Goliath, David's Encounter with, 310 

Gospel, an Eloquent Exposition of 

the, 430 
God's way the best, 477 
Guest, an Evening, 430 
Guest-Chamber, Jesus preparing His, 

434 
Guarding the Crown of England, 96 
Grace Illustrated, 164 



Henry Clay Trumbull released, 339 
Hippodrome Chairs Exciting Curiosi- 
ty, 265 

Hippodrome, a witness in the judg- 
ment, 258 
Hippodrome and Ark contrasted, 346 
Hippodrome, last Sunday in the, 39$ 
Holy Spirit, The, 494 
Hymn Criticized, 286 
Holy Ghost, honoring the, 273 



INDEX. 



SOI 



Holy Ghost, Man Swearing by the, 281 
Hippodrome Choir, Death in the, 2(A 



I. 



" If " in the Right Place, An 198 
Indians following their Chief, 314 
Induce the members to work, 465 
Intemperance, Converts in Europe fall- 
ing by, 457 
Illustration turned against its author, 

468 
Irishman's Saying, 422 
Irritability at home, 478 
Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea, 343 

J- 

Jesus, Mary at the tomb of, 428 
Jerusalem, Easter morning in, 428 
Joshua, dying testimony of, 380 
Joy, Three kinds of, 482 
Joining the Church, and Lost in it, 187 
Jesus in the Synagogue, 66 
Jesus in all the Churches, in 
Jesus Marvelled Twice, 25 
Jesus, Pilate trying to save, 298 
Jesus, indignities offered to, 296 
Jesus, Room for everything but, 222 
Jonathan and his Armor-bearer, 306 

K. 

King, desiring a, 302 



L. 



Lazarus, Death of, 219 

Lazy, too, to stay converted, 328 

Legend, 228 

Leper Leaving Home, 195 

Light, gas-pipe a conveyor of, 459 

"Lift me papa," 459 

Lincoln's 600,000, t,77 

Libby Prison, scene in, 336 

Lion and Dog in Zoological Garden, 116 

Little Girl's Question, 91 

Light-house keeper, asleep, 353 

Life, inner and outer, 375 

Loquacious people in the inquiry room, 

411 
London, photographing inmates of an 

institution in, 455 
London, burial custom in, 436 
Losing sight of self, 491 
Looking on the Dark Side, 32 
Looking at the Pole, 105 
Lost Miner's Cry for Help, 144 
Loss of the Soul, the Greatest Loss, 132 



Lost one minute, saved the next, 232 
Love, denying existence of, 327 
Love Expressed by Anger, 245 

M. 

Mad people think other people mad, 

282 
Man Clinging to a Boat with his Teeth, 

141 
Man in Drifting Boat, 146 
Magnetism of success, 304 
Mason and Dixon's line, 233 
Matrimonial alliances, 319 
Man a failure, 415 
Matrimony, illustration from, 407 
Magnet, particles of steel and the, 436 
Man with a book of printed promises, 

456 
Man with marked notes, 486 
Methodists, exhorting the people to 

imitate the, 428 
Men, pitying public, 376 
Men not Ashamed of Partizanship, 181 
Men-Worship, 13 
Men, too vile for Earth, not fit for 

Heaven, 255 
Memory in the future, 253 
Meaning of Grace, 149 
Missionary Fainting in his Speech, 39 
Ministry, Wesley's idea of a call to the, 

383 
Ministry, necessity of a divine call to 

the, 383 
Minister, fresh annointing of a, 470 
Mistaken Use of Property, 204 
Minister Carrying his Boy and his 

Book, 117 
Moody as a Martyr, 168 
Moody and his little boy, 412 
Moody's mistake in Chicago, 408 
Moody's idea of judgment, 371 
Mountain, Sabbath School on the, 379 
Mother's prayers answered after her 

death, 355 . 
Moody's choice text, 421 
Moody chilled by a strange prayer, 420 
Moody's experience after receiving the 

Spirit, 471 
Moody controverting an old maxim, 448 
Mountains, the two, 439 
Moody's reason for not smoking, 456 
Moody's increase of faith, 489 
Moody's prayer for the failure of rum- 
sellers answered, 457 
Moody's headache and remedy, 490 
Moody's rule for reading books, 452 
Moody's Daily Rule, 52 



502 



INDEX. 



Moody's View of Nature after Conver-* 

sion, 55 
Moody and the Young Scoffer, 192 
" More to Follow," 169 
Moody Left Fatherless, 213 
Moody's early views of God, 243 
Moody twice in the jaws of death, 253, 
Moody's Hope of Success, 19 
Moody's footprints in the snow, 322 
Moody and his shadow, 322 
Moody's contempt for mediums, 312 
Moody and the timid Judge, 280 
Moody and the Judge, 30 
Moody and His Shadow, 113 
Moody's Idea of Judgment, 70 
Mother and Photograph of Son, 212 
Mother Visiting Dying Son, 202 
Mother, Stolen boy restored to his, 249 
Mother and her prodigal son, 248 
Mother and Two Sons, 29 
Moses a Student Forty Years, 33 
Mother Leaving her Boy " without a 

Tear," 60 
Mother and Blind Babe in Eye Infirm- 
ary, 134 
Mother and Dying Boy, 137 
Mother's Picture Turned to the Wall, 
I3 1 



N. 



Name, the best title to a, 219 
Natures, the two, 363 
Napoleon and the soldier, 372 
Napoleon and the drafted man, 417 
New York Helping Chicago, 130 
Nicodemus, Rev„, D.D., L.L. D., 89 
Noah's Carpenters Unsaved, 170 
Noah on a preaching tour, 416 
Noah entering the Ark, 349 
Noah and his boy, fancy picture of, 352 
Noah ridiculed, 347 
Noah Waiting and Working, 34 
Noah, saved by the Ark,- not by feeling, 

225 
Norwegian Boy in Boston Prayer- 
Meeting, 184 
No Substitute for the Bible, 112 
Novelty, clamoring for, 316 



O. 



Observation, taking an, 369 

Old Mode of Signing Documents, 178 

One Story from All Lips, 104 

One thing thou lackest, 495 

Opium eater saved, 340 

Origin of Sin Illustrated, 100 

Our refuge, 493 



Paid for Crossing the Atlantic, 148 

" Papa, I'se Coming," 178 

Patching up the Old Adam Nature, 

90 
Parents led to Christ by dying child, 

355 

Parents, Appeal to, 353 

Peter, Confession of, 386 

Priest, Judas confessing to a, 389 

Peter, profanity of, 395 

Peter, fall of, 390 

Peter in doubt and trouble, 384 

Peter, Christ's message to, 396 

Peculiarity, Shunning, 440 

Pew, Heaven not won by a title to a, 
438 

Photographing the heart, 412 

Philosophizing about suffering, 472 

Philadelphia, Lady seeking Christ in, 
224 

Photograph Venders, 13 

Pilate, vascillation of, 399 

Picture, hideous, at Paris Exhibition, 
258 

Pictures, the two, 451 

Pollock, Gov., and the prisoner, 344 

Police law, 414 

Poker, A Woman with a, 35 

Prisoner, pardoning a condemned, 
342 

Promiscuous sittings, 466 

Promises, an old man's mark upon the, 
454 

Prayers are mummeries without for- 
giveness, 479 

Praising God with a cut finger, 485 

Prayer better than Criticism, 40 

Prairie on fire, 71 

Praying for a Husband Twenty Years, 
142 

Preaching in the Tombs, 124 

Preaching through gas jets, 241 

Predicting the Time of a Mn's Con- 
version, 138 a 

Present Salvation, 128 

Prison, laughing at men as they come 
out of, 259 

Prodigal's Return and Reception, 209 

Prodigal's Forlorn Condition, 205 

Prodigal's Best Friend, 207 

Proposal, a cruel, 304 

Punished, rejectors of Jesus, 400 

Putting Christ on a level with other 
men, 387 

Pumps and pumping, 469 

Pumps, waterless, 288 

Puzzled about Room in Heaven, 145 



INDEX. 



5°3 



Q. 

Queen's Crown, value of the, 299 

R. 

Red-hot Hearts, 38 

Refuge, cities of, 230 

Revival in Capernaum, 21 

Revival at Princeton, 12 

Revivals and anxious benches, 277 

Recognition hereafter, 434 

Resurrection, life cheered by the hope 

of the, 434 
Rebuked, Church-rovers, 453 
Retain the same leader, 463 
Recognition on Earth, 467 
Refusing Salvation, 496 
Richmond, Jubilee meeting in, 337 
Roman Catholic Bishop in prison, 331 
Roman custom of Scourging, 298 
Romans, back again into the 7th of, 365 
Rome, Peter drifting toward, 388 
Rowland Hill and Lady Ann Erskine, 

136 
Rumseller, ushering the into glory, 254 
Rum, children robbed by, 328 



Sacrifice, no substitute for obedience, 

3°7 
Samaritan Woman Confessing Christ, 

190 
Sammy and His Mother, 83 
Sad Message, 135 
Saved by Trust, 106 
Salvation a Greater Mystery than Sin, 

99 
Salvation, simplicity of, 229 
Salvation, knowledge of, insufficient, 

227 
Saul in David's power, three times, 311 
Saul's death, 313 
Saul and the witch of Endor, 312 
Saul's Jealousy, 311 
Saviour, selling the, 295 
Saying of the Scotch Lassie, 55 
Sambo and the Judge, 364 
Sankey's Opinion of Paul, 449 
Saving Power, Unlimited, 474 
Scripture Characters, Fall of, 391 
Sceptic Converted, 28 
School Ruled by Love, 164 
Scotch Woman's Saying, 174 
Scotchman's Idea of Salvation, 157 
Seeking Christ for what He is, 264 
Secret, Society man, 318 
Self, Talking about, 367 



Secure Good Ventilation, 464 
Sham love, illustrated, 326 
Shoemaker's Restitution, 123 
Ship Illustrating the Christian's 

Relation to the World, 445 
Sin, Excusing, 361 
Sing New Hymns, 462 
Sin Worse than Leprosy, 196 
Siftings of one Church Dropped into 

Another, 101 
Sincerity of Belief Insufficient, 172 
Sin Perplexed by the unpardonable, 

284 
Slave and sign post, 279 
Slavery, illustration from, 335 
Slaves Greeted with a Shout of 

Freedom, 342 
Smiley Miss, Auntie and, 339 
Soul Saving in the " Gas Works," 52 
Soldier and Sister, 26 
Soldier enlisting, 234 
Soul, ball dress the price of a, 267 
Spurgeon's Remark, 146 
Spurgeon and the Little Boy, 79 
Spirit, The Gift of the, 468 
Spurgeon Showing Pictures of his 

Boys, 451 
Spirit, Repeated Baptisms of the, 469 
Speak to the Stranger, 467 
Stumbling and Trusting, 424 
Substitution, 402 
Sudden Conversions, 82 
Suicide, causes of, 217 
Sunshine above the Mountain Storm, 

Syrophenecian Mother, 152 



Talk, soul-chilling, 251 

Talking of the Master, 191 

Targets for the Devil, 329 

Tears in England over the Chicago 

Fire, 130 
Testing our love for God, 329 
Testing a Christian Lady, 59 
Text, followed by a mother's favorite, 

271 
Theatre-goers, mistaken ideas of, 320 
The Leper Going Home, 25 
The Badge of Christianity, 55 
The Power of Faith for Others, 26 
The Best Thing, 58 
The Giant and the Stripling, 16 
The Tolling Bell in New England, 69 
The Brazen Serpent, 102 
The Repreached Sermon, 75 
Thrilling Scene in a Prison, yy 
Thomas, the Missing, 431 



5°4 



INDEX. 



Three Classes who will not Accept 

Salvation, 496 
Time, Killing, 452 
True Friendship, 493 
Truth injured by harshness, 325 
Truth surrendered to, fear, 325 
Trying and Trusting, 157 
Twice Born Souls, 95 
Two Men Going over Niagara Falls, 

147 
Two Young Men led to Christ by 

Sympathy, 62 
Two Men afraid of Each Other, 185 



U. 



Unbelief not a Misfortune, but a Sin, 

176 
Union Soldier, The Maimed, 417 
Using the word " Take," 83 
Ushers, death among the, 268 



Value of Christian Hope, 480 

w. 

Waiting to do Great Things, 48 
Wanderer Returning in Tears, 214 



Way to Get Faith, 174 
Welcome to foreign Princes 215 
Wearing Long Faces, 67 
Wesley's Motto, 44 
Wealth, Opportunities to Invest, 441 
Welch Preacher, Sign of Jonah De- 
fined by a, 427 
Will, son subdued by father 333 
Wind Currents Blowing in Different 

Directions, 92 
World, separation from the 317 
Woman, Dying Young, 404 
Whitefield and the General, 369 
Work, Men of one, 378 
Work, A Young Convert at, 450 



Y. 



Young Lady and Obstinate Boy, 48 
Young Sceptics Confounded, 93 
Young Man Ashamed of Himself, 183 
Young Lieutenant's Conversion, 475 
Young Christian Lady Reproducing 
Herself, 444 



Zaccheus, an Example of Sudden 
Conversion, 121 






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